Main Edition
US
FR
More vaccine uptake is needed Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty
Matt Hancock stood up in the Commons yesterday to congratulate himself and the Government on how well it had done recently. More than 2,000 cases of the new “Indian” variant have been detected, nearly 500 of them in Bolton and Blackburn, but Hancock was pleased to tell everyone that he has sent thousands of vaccination and testing staff to the areas, and to Bedford, where there’s another outbreak.
It’s inconvenient timing, given that England has just relaxed restrictions, and the Health Secretary didn’t seem overly keen to talk about the Government’s failure to impose restrictions on travel from India for several weeks after the new variant was known to be causing havoc in south Asia. But he made one interesting point: the majority of people in Bolton and Blackburn who are in hospital with the new variant are of an age who are eligible to have the vaccine, but who have chosen not to.
That is true. And apparently there are “growing concerns” in Downing Street that even a small number of people refusing Covid vaccines could delay the final restrictions in June. Hancock didn’t say it, but there does seem to be an attitude among some people, not just in Government, that vaccine-hesitant people have made their bed and now they need to lie in it. They’ve been offered the jab, they’ve turned it down, and it’s now their own problem.
That’s understandable. After all, the most prominent vaccine sceptics are crankish academics and Jeremy Corbyn’s brother, Piers — although Jeremy himself doesn’t seem completely on board the vaccine train either.
But while the middle-class dinner-party sceptics get the most attention, vaccine hesitancy is actually highest in other demographic groups — notably, ethnic minorities and the most deprived. While more than 90% of Britons over 50 have had at least one jab — and the British are the least vaccine-sceptical nation in the world — coverage varies widely by ethnicity. By April, people of white British or Indian heritage had over 90% take up; but people of Pakistani origin had just 78%, and black African and black Caribbean groups were down at 71% and 67% respectively.
There’s a socioeconomic difference, as well, although it’s not so pronounced. Only 87% of people in the most deprived 20% of the population were vaccinated, compared to 95% of the richest 20%.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThis article should come with a ‘Government propaganda’ warning.
Many people (I’m sure the rate of uptake is being exaggerated) have weighed up the risks and benefits of having an experimental vaccine, and have made a conscious choice not to take it. To then blame restrictions not ending on these people is pretty disgusting in my opinion, when so many of these restrictions have made absolutely no logical sense, and are in many cases hugely contradictory.
In my group of acquaintances (friends, family, work) I do not know anyone who has had this disease, either during the never ending lockdowns or when there has been some return to normality. One could therefore conclude that maybe the spread isn’t quite so far reaching as is being made out. So to force every single person in this country to take an experimental vaccine is bizarre at the least, and bordering on criminal at worst.
Also, nice try at trying to cause division, suspicion and anger at certain communities. If/when that backfires will be interesting to see.
Your highly subjective comment is itself summed up in your final paragraph.
Fennie, there is no real chance if logic argumentation with what Tom Chivers politely labelled as “scepticals”. I am not as nice as Tom, and can only hope that the next variants start killing faster. This way the world would get rid of non-vaccinated “scepticals” faster. Thus people that value their lives above pointless “opinion powerplay” would no longer be vulnerable to the real damage ignorance is enabling (virus variants). Sort of Darwinism to the rescue…
Wouldn’t it be rather less psychopathic to hope that the 100,000+ variants discovered to date continue to become less virulent over time, than to hope that they start to become more virulent and kill people faster?
As a general note, the budget for de-programming those who have been mentally scarred by government fear-based behavioural modification programmes is clearly going to have to be quite large.
You are arguing with anti-human psychopaths. These are people who hate humanity and insist there are too many people in the world. They want more death. They want food supply disruptions. Fuel disruptions. Hospital disruptions. Isolated elderly whose care and protection aren’t monitored. This is the whole purpose of the fear campaign.
I love your compassion Andre…fair play to ya…
And I love the compassion of the anti-vaxxers whose stupidity is killing people as we speak. But I realise discussing that is pointless, as they clearly select what evidence they chose to believe. Of course all these dead body piles are just a hoax, right?
In the meantime the virus, that couldn’t care less about human stupidity, rages on and mutates…
You really are beyond stupid. You are dangerous. You would be one of the first to don the leather jackboots and round up dissidents. Sick individual.
Said by a well of “knowledge” as yourself, I’ll take your childish insults as a badge of honor.
The anti-vaxxers are the equivalent of drink drivers….
Actually, it’s the vaxxed people who are still able to transmit and catch the illness (yes, it actually happens… look up the new buzzword «breakthrough cases») who are going to become the asymptomatic superspreaders the mainstream has been blaming for the past 13+ months. How does it feel to have the mirror pointed right back at you?
1st, viruses mutate. Period. 2nd, if we are really going to open the Pandora’s box of blame as to the « scariants », let’s not overlook the role half-vaxxed people are playing and have played in creating them.
It‘s kind of ironic how people who based their support for lockdown and all its trimmings on their supposed care and compassion for others, are now targeting the unvaccinated for the very fate that they were supposedly trying to save people from.
Because they are vectors of infection ?
Your argument assumes that infection in it of itself is bad. It’s not. What we care about is health. Vaccinated individuals do very well when reinfected. It’s unvaccinated individuals who may do poorly. But that was a choice that they made for themselves.
This is the problem when forming arguments around scary sounding words like “infection” rather than forming an argument from principles.
Fiona, does it occur to you that the “others” in your phrase are common folk, whereas the object of my outrage are the incredibly selfish anti-vaxxers that are ensuring the death toll increases?
We’re not discussing some “personal freedom” here Fiona – these are people’s lives. Everything they ever had. I guess some people only realise the folly once it kills people that they know. Otherwise they stick to the usual combination of selfishness and ignorance.
The trouble is that the government advice from the start has been contradictory. They , taking the advice of SAGE, wish to enforce isolation on most of the population-even employing the prison term ‘lockdown’.However at the same time they allowed millions of people, legally & illegally to enter. Like putting draught proofing on your windows but taking off the doors.
Sage? This Sage? https://archive.is/LnArR
Professor Ferguson said he wanted to follow example of the original city it came from & realized after seeing Italy that he could achieve partial lockdown
He admired Beijing Government .SAGE need stuffing for scaremongering ..his 5 models are Wrong..
No need, Baron. The anti-vaxx crowd already built it and we’re living in it out of their choice. That is the inequitable, hard truth about pandemics.
And your highly silly reply is sad.
I think today’s Daily Wail front page falls nicely into the ‘hate speech’ bracket. Isn’t hate speech about inciting hatred? If that was the intention they’ve cracked it, I’d say.
A statement like yours deserves data, or it is just innuendo. What has the Mail printed that is “hateful”?
See Daily Mail website!
The closest to ‘hate speech’ I see on the site is some cop joining in with the anti-Israeli protests. Hopefully she’ll be fired.
DM is one of the few sites where people can leave comments freely-they often disagree with the article itself. Within the full on-line version the front page is constantly changing and updating through the day
If today’s article by the person married to a minister was meant to test the water , I would judge looking at the comments that the population is not convinced. Just as insulting people never made them your friend , showing you don’t know difference between viral & bacterial infection doesn’t instill confidence either.
I agree 100%. I find it absolutely mind-boggling that people seemed to have (temporarily?) switched-off their critical thinking capacity when it comes to these vaccines. Why anyone would unquestionably have this agent injected into their bodies, when there is so little known about the long-term consequences is a mystery to me. Plus, doesn’t anyone have at least a tiny little speck of scepticism about the fact that there is such an obvious lop-sided reporting due to massive censorship of critical voices? Again. Mind-boggling.
Yep, I’m puzzled by this continuous portrayal that it’s only ethnic minorities that are ‘vaccine hesitant’, thus giving some an apparent reason to turn this into a ‘race issue’. I’m aware of just as many white ‘vaccine hesitant’ people as those from ethnic minorities.
As 67% of afro caribbean have taken it and over 90% of Uk white people have taken it – please explain how that is not different in your view.
Don’t ask whackjobs for rational thought
But how is your universe of acquaintances divided between white and non-white? The article gives the stats for vaccine hesitancy in each group. It’s not only present in ethnic minorities but it is significantly more prevalent.
I wish they wouldn’t call it hesitancy. It may be they have looked at the facts and understand the risks and things like absolute risk reduction. Maybe a little optimistic but can they deny early treatment with ivermectin or Fluvoxamine forever?
agree, re ivermectin(and doxycycline) plus a. r. r. versus relative r. r. Also seeing that people can still catch and transmit virus even after a jab, the unvaccinated are at more risk of bad outcomes catching it from a “vaccinated” person.
They don’t work and have potentially serious side effects. This is science, not religion.
Yes, and that any opposing views to the official narrative apparently only come from “crankish academics”.
Frightening.
“crankish academics” (sic) – rather many well trained and experienced scientists who have held senior positions in the vaccine industry. The crankish academics seem to be the ones that populate ‘SAGE’ (a misnomer if every there wa one); one in particular has the most appalling record on previous epidemiological predictions.
I’m not sure if you’re backing up my observation or not.
I’m puzzled by this continuous portrayal that it’s only ethnic minorities that are ‘vaccine hesitant’
First, the article does not say that it is only ethnic minorities.
Second, ethnic minorities seem to form the bulk if refuseniks.
No you are not. The stats quoted show different.
Perhaps you’re aware of more ‘white’ people than ethnic minority folks.
or no i believe breakdown on 36.5Million take up is 69% white 31% Non-White …
The mainstream media shills are performing the job they were paid to do enthusiastically. Mr Chivers is a prime example. If we ever manage to have a Nuremburg version 2 I can only hope he and his fellow shills are near the top of the list for examination of the role they played in terrifying the population and splitting whole families and communities apart.
It also appears earlier pronouncements by leading figures saying there was no need for masks have been disappeared, though I haven’t checked this is in fact the case.
There has been much information memory holed that doesn’t align with the official narrative. As someone else said, “1984 isn’t a novel, it’s an instruction manual”.
Because the long term consequences of long covid or death aren’t very attractive?
What does that have to do with it? Have you looked for yourself at the death statistics since this pandemic started and tried to put them in any context? Same for ‘long COVID’. I suggest spending a few hours of your time exploring the ONS website as well as euromomo. Try also looking at the official data (and I don’t mean a newspaper) now on the death rate as a percentage – even the WHO publishes this somewhere – as it’s around the 0.1% mark.
Try also looking at the eudravigilance and UK yellow card numbers of reported adverse effects and deaths after the vaccines.
Finally, sorry, but death is a certainty for everyone.
«Long-haul covid» is better known as «post viral syndrome». Not new. Happens with after many viruses. Only now is it getting uber special attention. Gee… wonder why?
It is mind boggling. Sadly the lack of critical thinking skills is not temporary and didn’t arise with the vaccines. The early and continuing suppression and discrediting of top scientists should have rung alarm bells in every conscious person planet wide. I feel I am living in a very lonely place these days and have given up trying to suggest people in my circle listen to some different opinions. More often than not, I am met with rolling eyes. I don’t know what the truth is, but I need to live with confidence that at some point in the future, truth will see the light of day.
If you don’t know now what the truth is how can you be confident you’ll recognize it if and when it emerges blinking from its den.
Hi Gracie. You are not alone. Check out https://t.me/worldwidedemonstration and see all the people. You’ll need to get Telegram, the app, but it certainly is eye-opening, and as such, is getting some negative press, but these days that’s more of an accolade. You have more friends than you know, and we are all having these feelings. Its taken decades to set the stage for this situation, but I truly believe that good will prevail. I just wish it would hurry up!
listening to John Lee, Mike Yeadon and the rest of the gang, on alternative media, its a necessary infusion of rational and expert knowledge. The BBC has left us in a scientific wasteland. No wonder we look elsewhere.
UKColumn.org is doing the job which the BBC is failing to do, but still demanding our money with menaces.
You are not the only one
“… should have rung alarm bells in every conscious person planet wide.’ And therein lies the rub. People are sleep, lulled to slumber by the media and the ‘bread and circuses’, kept in nightmarish fear of the bogeymen coming to get them; quelled only by the soothing and nurturing hand of ‘Nanny State’ administering doctors orders … ‘just a little p***k and all will be well…’
Sigh, I can’t even describe in words the sensation of the needle going in without it being starred out. Nanny, oh nanny, save me from the bogeymen!
You are right in your concerns. The shutting down of any contrary opinion and the lack of open, honest discussion is a cause for very great concern. As is the documented psychological warfare that has been deliberately waged to terrorise the population. These are facts. This is totalitarian.
It’s an intelligence test and that’s why they are confused that some communities have low uptake.
Ivermectin, that has been shown in numerous studies to cut hospitalisations and death rates by 80%+, is denied to the UK public by our honest, truthful, responsible, caring “goverment” that is attempting to ensure that everyone, including children, are jabbed time and again with experimental juices for which the long-term consequences are completely unknown.
Oh phooey, never mind all that, think of the dividends sir, the dividends! I must phone my stockbroker.
Like Claire, I trust you are also fully aware of the risks – short term and ‘long-term consequences’ if lucky enough to survive – of catching Covid and becoming seriously ill? Out of interest, are you also a vaccine denier in the case of others – MMR, polio, etc? Was Edward Jenner an 18th Cen version of Josef Mengele in your booK? It’s people like you that boggle my mind!
I am allergic to Albumin based vaccines,luckily Aztra Zeneca (grown on blood platelets?) i had No side effects x2 ..Vaccines have Eliminated Polio a curse in 1950s&1960s and varroa ..
The spread was pretty much everywhere, but it did hit certain groups a lot harder. Due to the nature of viruses/immune systems and very poor government, care homes and hosptials were badly hit.
Other groups had the unfortunate mix of poverty, high density living, non wfh jobs, multi generational households and ‘strong communities’ which is a euphemism for sticks together, distrusts wider society and it’s rules. I also suspect that many of these communities also have a larger % of younger people who won’t even have been offered the vaccine yet. If you add all these things together you’re going to get a much higher infection rate in these communities.
The one short term fix may well be to prioritise vaccinating younger people in these areas. It doesn’t have to be based on race, religion etc, just on the number of people in any defined region with anti bodies.
Vaccine wise the government has acted over issues with AZ. Nothing is risk free, and potential side effects need to be weighed against very real Covid side effects. Vaccines shouldn’t be forced on people, but spouting on about ‘experimental’ weakens your argument. In fact it’s one of the arguments that’s helping kill more people from poorer communities.
Nevertheless, it remains ‘experimental’ until 2023.
This is a damaging, divisive article in so many ways but sadly predictable as scapegoats are sought in the face of more government goalpost-moving.
Had the government given any useful advice to populations as to how they might protect themselves, ministers might enjoy a greater degree of trust among the people. It became apparent months ago that vitamin D deficiency was very much a marker for vulnerability to Covid 19, and so darker-skinned citizens could reduce their risks by supplementation. This received very little publicity – a pity since such vast sums were spent on media messaging. Only much later were (rather weak) vitamin D supplements provided to some groups.
Someone used the term ‘informed refusal’ to describe their situation; I would be proud to use this term for my own position. Mr Chivers can save his insults – I am indifferent to his opinion of me.
I am in the control group, so I’m not having it. DO feel free to join me.
Me too.
I have suffered from anaphylactic shock three times. I am not going to subject myself to the risk of a fourth time.
Being ‘elderly’ , I do know three people who have had the COVID virus, one of whom has pretty much every comorbidity you can think of. They all suffered an unpleasant week or two, but only one has any long term effects (and they might be attributable to her other health issues.) What I don’t understand is that all three were offered and took up the vaccine, because if you already have naturally acquired antibodies, why do you require artificial stimulus? And why did one of these people then have another bout, worse than the first, immediately after being vaccinated. It just doesn’t quite stack up…..
I think what’s killing those in poorer communities has been the refusal to use proven medication to relieve symptoms in order to force through the emergency authorization of the injections (not vaccines)
Nobody is “spouting on” – they are experimental according to even the companies who manufacture them. Long term trials won’t be completed until 2023.
“I do not know anyone who has had this disease,”
I know 5 people directly, who have had it, one of them seriously and just managed to stay out of hospital. His doctor said, “If you have to go into hospital, update your will before you go…” This was a healthy man, late 50’s who did martial arts.
I know of others who have lost relatives.
I agree the lockdowns will have proven to be harsh, but remember the lockdown happened to provide spare capacity for the NHS. It wasn’t there to stop the spread of COVID.
The alleged purpose of lockdowns has changed regularly, as successive versions have been busted. The only constant is that the Government really likes lockdowns.
I don’t think they do. Boris has been criticised consistently for not wanting to lockdown, and for not locking down quicker, harder and longer. His critics need to make up their minds if they want to claim the government didn’t lock down quicker because they ‘deliberately wanted to kill old people’ or locked down too quickly because they ‘deliberately wanted to destroy the economy’.
Boris’s agenda has changed by the week.
He is no cuddly libertarian.
He should have stuck to the original pandemic planning plan, as did Sweden.
Sweden is my favourite country now. The only one with common sense.
Also add Texas and Florida to your list.
This is true. The pyramid of power that has been built under the Covid star never wants to be dismantled. Many are delighted by their enhanced profile and have never experienced such ego and fame and power ‘saving the planet and punishing heretics’ and it is intoxicating and addictive. They and of course those who already seek a career of enforcing and enjoying authority over others get the same kick out of their latest authoritarian gig being enforced as their victims get from their own more easily understood thrill like driving fast or winning at bowls!
‘The pyramid of power under the Covid star’. Perfect description of the clamouring experts & media desperate for lockdown to continue indefinitely so they can maintain their new found relevance.
An excellent description. Mr Chivers fits nicely with the “Kens and Karens” who scream at people who aren’t wearing a mask or social distancing. They are people who’s previous lives were as meaningless nonentities barely noticed by the rest of this. The ability to virtue signal publicly has given them a sense of worth which they never deserved and never will. When this is over their self loathing will be magnified many times and they deserve all that is coming to them.
They changed from saving the NHS to R under 1 after 3 weeks.
The minute the public/frog accepted that, it was toast/boiled.
Not to speak of leavimg the NHS a Covid only service for the following 9 months, a stupidity/deliberate eugenics program not matched by any other country of the world.
Early treatment with ivermectin or Fluvoxamine is shown to be effective in trials in reducing hospitalisation and deaths. This could be over whenever the government decide regardless of whether healthy people get vaccinated.
If they ever had been serious about preventing that, they would have focused on investigating treatments.
We all know what happened in that regard and why.
isn’t that what the ‘Nightingale’ hospitals were for – spare capacity?
Well it didn’t do too well, NHS is under pressure every winter as Governments since 1997 have cut beds in hospitals….isolation hospitals were fazed out in 1970s a mistake…Nightingale hospitals at £225million were hardly used………………..
Explain why hospitals are currently overwhelmed in the UK in May. And no, covid isn’t the answer. Purely coincidental that this happened at the same time as the vaccine rollout?
This is a seasonal respiratory illness that seriously affects those at end of life and those with serious comorbidities. These people should have been the focus of protection. They weren’t.
I agree I weighed up the risk of taking Vs the risk of governments restricting my movement if I don’t and decided to take it. As for covid of any variant I view the risk to me as similar to a lightening strike.
That’s exactly what Remainers said (and continue to say) about Brexiteers.
It’s a typical patronising liberal delusion. You just cannot conceive that some people might live their lives on different criteria, form different assessments of the same situation, make choices based on different priorities, so you just discredit them as ignorant and stupid.
They are for the most part primitive savages who don’t belong here at all.
Unless you’ve read a few of the 200,000+ scholarly papers published on covid19, your ‘weighing of the risks’ is a fine example of militant ignorance.
Weighing the risks means using your brain, your own judgement and your experience as a human being on this planet. It seems to me you belong to a timid and very regulated species. Get the vaccine at once and self isolate for the next 8 years is my advice.
Oh yes please! Vince and all the other Branch Covidians. I am looking forward to frequenting the places that will eventually ban people who wear masks or who are vaccinated.
I have read them all. The butler did it.
Just who is being forced to have the vaccine? I must have missed that directive – or perhaps that is just in your mind? As far as I am concerned the anti-vaxxers – of whatever colour or creed, although it is obvious by the locations the prevalence is in areas with an ethnic majority….are on a par with drink drivers, selfishly putting others at risk – and that is bordering on criminal.
We are not anti-vaxxers but hesitant about a vaccine that is neither a vaccine in the normal sense, has not been licensed (it has emergency approval only) and whose phase 3 clinical trials will not be completed until 2023. The real criminals are those who wish to shame perfectly healthy people into taking an experimental therapy which could, a few years down the line, injure or kill us. You, Susan Graham, to complete your analogy, are the one that serves a driver a ‘one for the road’ alcoholic drink and then blames them for the accident.
What utter fear crazed emotionally driven rubbish! The vaccines to date are experimental: therefore NO long term data on efficacy, safety and long term effects. The vaccines to date neither stop you getting the disease nor stop you passing it on, they are supposed to alleviate the symptoms if you get covid. So no amount of ”vaccinating” the population will stop the spread, though it may stop hospitalisations and/or deaths. Therefore it is of no consequence to person A (vaccinated) if persons B thru Z don’t get vaccinated. That is nothing like drinking and driving. It is not selfish to OTHERS to not want to take drugs that have no safety data. It is entirely selfish to expect people to take something that may harm them, either immediately (bells palsy, blood clots, heart failure, miscarriage, cytokine storm, allergic reaction…) or long term (the inserts for the vaccines state: no long term effects on fertility are known, as well as potential for adverse reactions to the wild virus and any other of a host of long term potential developments that will be unknown for some time to come, remember thalidomide, that was once perfecty safe?) And don’t forget that for the past year thousands of people have been having covid and developing their own ACTUAL immunity which will have a far more beneficial effect for the population as a whole.
Well said. Very well said.
I take it that you are aware that this terrible outbreak in the North west has resulted in all of four people in hospital (as of this morning) who have tested positive for Covid. There is no clear evidence that any have actually gone into hospital because of Covid.
Why do people believe government deceit, instead of looking these things up themselves?
If you are scared of getting covid because you are frail or have co-morbidities, please, take the ‘vaccine’. If you believe the ‘vaccines’ work, why would you feel angry that others aren’t having it? I have had covid, and was happy to get it. It was a mild infection, I was a bit floppy for a day or 2, but it didn’t stop me doing anything. I now have fully fledged natural immunity and I act as a strong defence against the spread to protect those who are frail and vulnerable. I believe that natural immunity is the best and strongest protection for this infection. I am not anti-vax. I believe vaccinating for serious disease is sensible and necessary. This is not a serious disease for the majority of the healthy population. If it was a serious disease the lock down measures we have had over the last year would have been useless. To prevent serious disease we would have had to have military enforced complete lockdown. lets hope we never have to deal with that.
At the moment being vaccinated isn’t compulsory, but attitudes like yours are coercive, discriminatory and ignorant.
Your post is also borderline racist. There is less take up in areas of BAME because they do not trust our government. Whatever the reasoning for this it should be considered and understood.
Please, get some balance. I won’t post links because it means I’ll get moderated, but good sources of information are (apart from the ONS and PHE England if you look in the right places) HART Health Advisory and Recovery Team; Collateral Global and LeftLockdownSceptics.
That magic word selfish again. I’m not having it because I am a carer for two members of my family. It is a balance between taking sensible precautions not to catch anything( which has worked so far) against an experimental vaccine whose possible side affects might put me out of action & then where will they be?
Are you drunk?
That’s silly and nasty. But what throughout this whole sorry period of our history has not been a relentless barrage of nastiness aimed at anyone who did not agree with the approved narrative. Its appalling. If the vaccine is any good those that have it will be ‘safe’. It is unbelievably selfish to demand people take something they do not want to take, just so you can feel safer. It goes against all pre-covid understanding of how vaccines work. Btw it is pure lunacy to believe the bug can be eradicated by vaccinating. We have far more serious health issues that we should be putting our minds and energies to work on. Fatty liver disease being one of them (affects 30% of the pop silently with nasty results once it makes its presence known and heading north, probably rapidly following lockdowns).
I don’t think restrictions should be based on it at all. Isn’t the idea that vaccinated = protected, unvaccinated = unprotected, so the risk of hospitalisation/death is predicated on the person choosing not to vaccinate – their risk/their choice. Cant see the problem myself.
I have had covid.. 4 of us got something..all different symptoms, within 2 weeks of each other and all tested positive. Nothing that couldnt be dealt with with a paracetamol or 2.. couple of days feeling a bit floppy for me, but didn’t stop me doing anything. Acted responsibly of course, although none of us were coughing, sneezing or anything like that. If I did indeed have covid, I have since tested negative..I am pleased to have fully blown natural immunity, effective against many parts of the virus, and most likely its variants, and not just immunity to one part of the infection. I do not want the vaccine. I do not believe this infection is anywhere near serious enough to warrant mass ‘vaccination’. I believe that those of us under 60 (and older if you choose) should be free to catch the infection and develop natural immunity. I cannot help but ponder that good that could have been done with the time, money and global co operation that this pandemic has engendered. We could have improved the lives of so many, made a huge difference to environmental issues, maybe even stopped wars, but instead we have made the rich richer, and condemned millions to untold suffering. It is utterly, gut wrenchingly disgustingly wrong. And I am one of the vilified selfish… arghhhh
And of course you are also one of the probably 20% of the population who might catch the virus (Diamond Princess). There are many who simply won’t, or have a natural immunity already.
Clearly you should write up your insights in a paper. I am sure Nature would love to publish it.
Dear waldo, I think it is generally accepted that up to 80% of papers on medicine are either of little or minor use to practical medicine or plain wrong… Individual experiences may actually bring more to medical thinking than many papers do, sadly. I tend to read papers regularly: they are often high quality research pieces ….. but rarely add something to medicine for the majority…
As a retired medical consultant who did research and reviewed publications, that is not generally accepted. It is thought that about 30% of original work may be either plain wrong or the effects not as generalisable to other patients. Individual experiences of doctors are highly fallable. Many doctors are biased by a sense of infallabiltiy, and this has led to some disastrous treatment being adopted. If something can be tested by a RCT, it should be, and until then. observational studies have the scientific status of gossip.
Lucky if you don’t know anybody in your circle of acquaintances who has had the disease. In mine, I count two deceased and at leat 10-12 who went through severe versions of Covid.
The “experimental” vaccines,as you name them, have been injected in tens of millions of humans for almost one year with almost no side effect (even if you count the ten-something with clots). But of course, this is propaganda and the thousands of deaths are pure governemental invention.
You’re so right but better put on your tin hat now!
MHRA UK 1000+ deaths
VAERS US 4000+ deaths
In contrast, nearly everyone I know seems to have had covid, me included, probably, although my experience was in the days just before testing came in – I haven’t caught it since, despite being exposed repeatedly (through work), so I clearly have some kind of immunity. As for the vaccines, I’m hesitant on several counts. One, many of the people I know who’ve had covid have had bad reactions to the vaccines. Two, I already react badly to any vaccine and it took me weeks to get over a simple tetanus jab a few years ago – the vaccine may be worse for me than the remote chance of catching covid again. Three, if you are one of the unfortunates who suffer vaccine damage, try proving it, especially if symptoms appear gradually afterwards, rather than a dramatic collapse at the time. In my experience with a family member, you hit a brick wall and are told to go away, die quietly and don’t be so ridiculous. Correlation is obviously not causation, but the experience left me very cynical indeed, wary of propaganda and immune to being told that I’m selfish for wanting to wait until I see more data.
A good number of people are ill for 2 days after the vaccine.
For the average under 65 age, covid vaccines change the average odds on illness, life and death very little or none at all. So if you take the vaccine the only thing you can be sure of is that you have a small chance of a side effect …..
I wish people wouldn’t call results ‘side effects’. They are just results, exactly the same as the result you are working for. It’s up to the user to evaluate whether effect A is worth Effect B or C. People do this all the time, many people I know who also suffer with arthritis do not take the prescription anti inflammatories unless they are in a desperate state, because of the parallel effects of the drugs. Effects, not side effects.
Claire – well said. I have had it. The symptoms were so mild that I only discovered the fact when I went for a blood test for something else.
Meanwhile, in my vaccination letter, I was informed that it was a drive-in facility, and that I could only drive – it was unsafe for pedestrians. In 2020, 300+ people my age or younger with no health conditions died with COVID; in 2019, 900+ died in road accidents. Setting aside the currently unquantified risks associated with the untested experimental vaccine, I was at a greater risk of death driving to be vaccinated than I was from the pathogen being vaccinated for.
I declined the invitation.
They have realized they are blaming the community who must not be upset , so the wife of Michael Gove can assert that the Indian variant did ‘not ( arrive) because of people returning from the sub-continent’. How did it get here then fly over land & oceans all by itself? She also claims that a vaccine still in its experimental stage until 2023 & whose manufacturers have been granted immunity from prosecution ‘most of us are fine with it…certainly more fine than if we caught covid’.Is she willing to bet the farm on that ascertion?
Just one question: in your opinion, when does a vaccine lose your clearly pejorative use of the term ‘experimental’?
Some missing information to all this ‘the vaccine is a panacea’ mindset that the article forgot to add.
As of May 6th 2021, there were 622,176 reported reactions to the experimental drug with 756 deaths (this is just the Astra Zeneca vax alone), and this from 167,141 total reports, meaning multiple adverse reactions had been had per person. And these are the reported ones, no doubt there have been many more unreported.
But don’t take my word for it – check it out for yourself.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/986033/DAP_AstraZeneca_050521.pdf
127 thousand coffins in the Uk say you may be wrong.
More variant fear porn.
“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free”.*
(* Aristotle.)
The truth will set you free.
Jesus.
Ah, Mr Stanhope! I replied fully (as fully as one can in the Comments) to the points made by your Mr Smith in the “The EU’s latest immigration crisis.” I found his and your comment a couple of days after being posted and I guess people move on after 24 hours to the next topic so my response has probably been missed. But check it out if you really want to know the reality.
Many thanks, and after a bit of archaeology I found it.
I fully concur with everything you say, and off course well remember the controversy that surrounded Mrs T’s demand for a rebate.
As with everything to with Brexit, passions still run high, even with a young American such as Jeremy Smith.
However given your depth of experience at the very centre of the furnace, I think you have earned the ‘Victor’s Palm’.
Incidentally I agree this present comments procedure is awful, particularly in comparison to the former Disqus one. Now it’s all Fire & Forget, with little or no opportunity for any real discussion, but c’est la vie!
I work in a CT lab (non-scientific role, but my degree is in Biology).
In all years before 2020 vaccine trials took several years before approval for use.
The results of the current trials for the Oxford/AZ and the Pfizer/BNT are due to be published in January and February 2023 respectively.
Pointing this out now usually results in being called an “Anti-Vaxxer”
Prior to 2020, pointing out vaccine trials took years to complete was general knowledge and uncontroversial.
I will wait until ALL the trials have been completed, read the information published and then I will make an informed opinion based on the results of the trials.
But that makes me an “Anti-Vaxxer”. Chivers is already suggesting that if I don’t get vaxxed now I will be putting lives in danger.
F*** You Tom
Can you confirm, please, that you are not putting my life in danger?
You have been vaccinated presumably and you are a risk-averse individual who will avoid people you don’t know (and even those you do), so who is putting your life in danger? You have the freedom to be vaccinated. Others have the freedom to wait and see, like Mr Clarke. And like me. I have no wish to be a guinea pig in a scientific trial so have declined the vaccine for now. If I lived in an area where the epidemic was raging and people were falling like ninepins, I might have a different attitude. The risks of the vaccine might be lower than the risks from the epidemic. But I don’t. Covid19 is as rare as hen’s teeth in my region so I prefer to wait and see first what problems emerge from the vaccination programme. I can then make an informed choice.
BTW, very few people die of Covid19. Your life is more in danger from cancer and heart disease (and old age) but everybody seems very happy to see the death rates from those two diseases shoot up. Have you complained to the NHS and your MP that their policies are putting your life in greater danger?
Logically, then, you will be what I think is now termed ‘staying in your bubble’, I assume? How big is the ‘region’, and how long (2023?) will you be waiting there until you’re secure in your faith, sorry, ‘informed choice’?
I think you are in fact acting exactly as a ‘guinea pig in a scientific trial’ would, but are choosing to be part of the control group. Well done, and thank you.
Sounds like paradise! Are dogs allowed?
Certainly NOT a scientific trial, more a large commercial trial.
I agree that the policies have caused a lot of collateral damage, though also significant % of this was caused by the pandemic, not the policies. This is the similar to how much social distancing wasn’t due to government policy either.
Vaccination should remain a matter of personal choice, and certainly no internal ID cards.
My reckoning was quite simple, I’m currently too young and healthy to be at much risk from Covid but:
A new French study establishes the cure was worse than the disease.
In France, NPIs saved 500,000 years of life, NPIs caused 1,200,000 years of life lost.
Can you prove your immune system will better deal with the virus after a vaccination and that will make you less “dangerous” to anyone else? No you can’t.
er, yes. These ‘vaccines’ are not vaccines in the traditional sense. A traditional vaccine is a dose of the inactivated disease. It illicits a fully blown immune response as if you had actually been exposed to the disease. This is desirable in diseases with serious outcomes like polio, measles, TB. The mRNA and DNA medicines only activate a part immune response. For mild disease (like Covid 19 for the majority of healthy individuals) your natural immunity will always be better than these new medicines, and give better protection against similar virus’ http://www.hartgroup.org/natural-vs-vaccine-immunity/
Yes, he is not putting your life in danger. If you believe that your life is in danger, from this virus or any other virus that exists or may exist as yet undetected or unidentified, protect yourself as you see fit , whether that be by being vaccinated or by avoiding contact with any other human being for as long as you feel necessary, or by wearing a useless cloth over your face, or any other means you desire. As above for any other perceived risk to your health.
i have not had the vaccine. I have not known anyone who has had Covid. I have tested negative on the odd occasion I have used a test. How can I put your life in danger?
I’ve upvoted you because I suspect this is meant to be a joke. If I’m wrong please mentally convert my upvote into a couple of hundred downvotes.
Actually, it’s not entirely a joke (it’s what my granny used to call “half fun and whole earnest”.)
I had the vaccine partly because I want to reduce the effect of the virus if I am exposed to it (I understand it is only 95% effective) but also because I do not want to be an inadvertent source of infection. Perhaps this is an inaccurate view, but I would rather live in an area where infection rates are low and vaccination rates are high (which I do) that in an area where infection rates are high because it is spreading like wildfire among the unvaccinated. 95% effectiveness in a low infection rate population is, in my unenlightened view, better than 95% in a high rate area – so I won’t be going to Rochdale etc any time soon. I do feel that the proudly unvaccinated are risking a greater spread in their immediate vicinity, and that must give higher risk to others there.
I thought that Andrew Clarke’s original comment implied that he didn’t give a f*** whether his behaviour might affect others. That means he is free to wonder round possibly spreading a virus which kills people, while taking the view that if they are worried about the risks, they should curtail their freedons.
Well, f*** you, Andrew
I explained my position quite clearly, using common knowledge.
That you totally misunderstand is more to do with a fearful mindset inculcated in to your thinking by behavioural psychologists and a media that dozens of times on a daily basis reinforces the message of the behavioural psychologists. Every day of every week of every month since March 2020.
The pharmaceutical industry has rapidly developed a gene therapy. The usual vaccine model, based on a Live Attenuated Vaccine (LAV) is not possible as a live virus has yet to be isolated. The mRNA gene therapy is previously untested in humans and in ongoing trials as I write. This really is not a vaccine in the usual sense. It is a medical intervention using a method never before used in humans.
This means that no-one knows exactly what the outcomes will be from humans being injected with this gene therapy, no matter which or how often “experts” tell you otherwise, which is why I cannot in all conscience take “the jab”.
You do understand that your body now has a foreign body it cannot remove. You have this strand of mRNA forever. Do you, or anyone else, know what will happen?
And it doesn’t stop you contracting the virus, it doesn’t stop you spreading the virus to others.
So Freddy, me old fruit bat, who you gonna call when you get ill next winter? Surely that “vaccine” is gonna protect you, right? Are you sure?
How do you know? Because an “expert” told you?
Or because the data collected, analysed and presented and published over the several years of the trial suggests that is so?
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that there will be a lot of “buyers remorse” after this next winter.
Stay safe, eh!
I cannot disagree with your analysis, but I am not comfortable with your conclusions, if only in my own circumstances. I know that the vaccine might not stop me contracting the virus, but I am gambling – yes, gambling – that if I do, the symptoms will be less severe. I have a compromised immune system, so I would not expect a good outcome if I were to get the virus (and I know a couple of people, both younger and healthier than me, who got it, and died.) Yes, it scares me.
I take your point about the mRNA, but again, if it does have an adverse effect I am willing to gamble that it should take time (years, not months) to manifest -and at my age I might not have that long anyway. If I were to get Covid, the timescale would much shorter, and it is a very nasty way to go.
“as a live virus has yet to be isolated.”
Isolated and cultured many times see :
“Isolation and characterization of SARS-CoV-2 from the first US COVID-19 patient” March 2020 There hasn’t been much effort directed at this particular type of technology probably because Coronaviruses, in particular, are prone to genetic recombination, so using a live attenuated coronavirus in a vaccine would run the risk of a vaccinated individual becoming infectious again + the cold storage problem.
“It is a medical intervention using a method never before used in humans.”
Nope. mRNA therapies have been trialled in humans for rabies, influenza, cytomegalovirus, and Zika and in a range of cancers, including acute myeloid leukemia, multiple myeloma, glioblastoma, melanoma, prostate cancer, and also in heart failure therapy.
As a therapeutic it is begining to sound like Aspirin.
“it doesn’t stop you spreading the virus to others.”
Well here are 2 papers that show that vaccination does reduce transmission :
“Impact of vaccination on SARS-CoV-2 cases in the community: a population-based study using the UK’s COVID-19 Infection Survey”
and
“Impact of vaccination on household transmission of SARS-COV-2 in England”
All good news. Enjoy
“You do understand that your body now has a foreign body it cannot remove. You have this strand of mRNA forever.“
What do you think RNase enzymes do, then? More importantly, why do you and the other ranters about MSMs and gene therapies expect anyone to pay attention to you when you are clearly just making stuff up?
Any cuckoos in Dounreay yet?
Of course he isn’t, not from this virus which has only infected a tiny minority of the population anyway, and which is serious only for a tiny minority of those who catch it, and kills only a tiny minority of those for whom it is serious.
Get serious.
Sorry, I hadn’t realised that Covid was such a minor ailment. (This not a serious comment).
We don’t know yet whether you have put your own life in danger and it maybe be sometime before we do. Though I doubt whether research that will test the dominant narrative will ever be allowed.
I guess every time I drive my car I increase the risk of putting some life in danger.
Oh , please.
Definitions are being changed for all sorts of things eg Pandemic and herd immunity.
The dishonesty is dreadful.
and ‘vaccine’
and “case”
Maybe one of the good things to come out of this whole sorry saga is that there will be more thought given to speeding up drug trials. Speaking as a relatively uninformed outsider, I wonder if more weight is placed on minimising side effects from vaccines and other drugs than on getting the best balance of outcomes for all, including getting effective treatments to patients faster. The nature of covid changed the balance in this specific case, but it’s at least worth thinking about the approach more generally.
There have been cheap alternatives which have efficacy but, because the vaccines needed emergency approval, they had to demonstrate that they were the only kid on the block. So Vit D, Ivermectin and generally taking good care of your own health got swept off the table and under the rug
Dexamethasone – cheap as chips and unlike Ivermectin and Vitamin D actually tested to destruction in a properly conducted trial last year (the RECOVERY trial).
Vitamin D may well be helpful in bolstering someone’s general health before they get sick but has not been shown to be a useful therapeutic once you do become ill with Covid
Ivermectin – well the jury may still be out on that one but again I haven’t seen a decent trial or a convincing systematic review of small studies – if you know of one then please post the citation.
“The nature of covid changed the balance in this specific case”
Not really; it was the headless chicken panicked response that ‘changed the balance’.
I can only upvote you once, unfortunately.
Tom Chivers is always scolding and shaming people into thinking this experimental jab must be injected into every living human. Where is informed consent? Oh wait, he doesn’t care. He has moral superiority.
Excellent and informed comment, thank you. I too would like to wait until full trials are over. Meanwhile I object to being called names because I choose to err on the side of caution for my health and well being.
I do wonder whether those who resort to name calling (“idiots” being a recent gem from an unnamed govt source) realise the extent to which that undermines their argument and how badly it reflects on them. It’s also, hang on, oh yes, bullying. Not a good look.
I see the media is now pushing the “refusenik” moniker for those of us erring on the side of caution.
See also the Drosten affair: the suspiciously fast approval of the obviously flawed PCR test to act as the primary determinant.
excellently put. World’s gone insane but the most important thing is not to give in. I can also tell you that there is a financial agenda running alongside this. Never in history have we heard Central Bankers hinge economic recovery on the vaccination rate. It is clear that there is a MASSIVE push to get as many injected as possible. From the financial angle this is a precursor to digital currency (not digital cash) which wil given Central Banks absolute power on consumer expenditure. On the agricultural front there is a push to break supply chains and push shipping costs to near breaking point. The aim here is re-direct demand from agricultural goods (traditional farming) and into GMO (several funded companies have spoken about this). My point is, there is A LOT going on and they are slowly converging. However nothing can be achieved until people are given their digital platforms and the vaccine is the precursor to this.
This assumes there is a general conspiracy among politicians and corporate heads to achieve a common goal. But these people would knife each other in the back if there were some short term gain to be made, so cannot see they would have the mutual trust to work towards the goal you describe – a goal which would actually be bad for some of them,
You should be compassionate, you are a Scientist,Tom is a Journalist.
You have a rational brain, he a butterfly brain.
As ‘they ‘ say, “when the battle over is they (journalists) come down from the hills and bayonet the wounded”.
One wonders if the mathematical epidemiologist cited in this piece has taken the trouble, along with the author and perhaps even HM Government, to step back and look at the overall death toll that covid has taken on the world’s population?
Not least in terms of diseases like AIDS or the Black Death, the latter of which rather effectively managed to take out an estimated 40% of the entire world’s hapless bods by the end of its furious Middle Age rampage.
Covid, thus far, has killed around 0.04% of the global population, with just under 0.2% of the UK’s population to date.
Not only that, but even at its height in April 2020, in terms of UK excess deaths, this month doesn’t even rank in the top 10 of this country’s worst months for excess deaths in the last 50 years.
Whilst most of its similar predecessors were somewhat less discriminate in terms of who they killed when it came to age ranges, genders and general health outlooks covid has, arguably rather decently, in relative terms, been rather benign, instead focusing by far the greatest attention of its deadly scythe on males, those over 65, and predominantly those with already known, potentially life-threatening health preconditions.
Given this context, the so obviously hugely deleterious, extensive steps taken and still being taken by our government to ‘battle covid’ seem to me to be more than a little drastic, perhaps even putting me in the loony, chattering Corbyns’ camp, but clearly the author of this piece would continue to argue otherwise.
Agreed except for the so called AIDS epidemic. The latest edition of Virus Mania gives a very interesting analysis on this and other viruses all supported by references to published data/studies etc
I think you are missing something. All of the resources of the NHS over the past 50 years, all of the government health plans around the world, all of evidence presented about better health, has focussed on life expectancy, on prolonging lives. Last week on UnHerd, an article purported to demonstrate that ethnic minorities were ‘poorer’ because they had shorter life expectancies, So now, about 25% of our population are over-60, and almost all of those are fat and unfit for life.
Within this context, you can’t logically dismiss Covid by saying that it only attacks old, fat people and therefore it is not serious. To be logically consistent, you would put all of your effort into protecting old people so that life expectancies continue too increase.
So you must come up with another set of logical principles:
1) People get faster health service if they don’t smoke, have a BMI of less than 25, etc. Set up a points scheme to give the best service to those who deserve it.
2) Aim lower for life expectancy – stop all operations on people over 75.
3) Pick special people to push to limits of fitness as examples of all that is good about life.
4) Take ethnic minorities with poor health records and segregate them from the rest of the people.
Hm. Sounds familiar.
Not sure if I understand your comment correctly?
My comment wasn’t meant to dismiss covid or be blasé about the deaths to date, merely to give it some much needed, wider context.
You’ve seemingly not only just redefined the context there, you’ve significantly narrowed it, basically framing it in terms of saving lives at any cost, even to the very obvious long-term economic, social and, arguably, healthcare detriment of by far the vast majority of the population.
Facts are, not that many people have died from covid, not that many will and yet governments the world over have taken highly questionable, hugely damaging, far reaching, disproportionate legal, economic, social and healthcare measures in order to tackle it under that very simplistic, apparently unquestionable premise of ‘saving lives’.
What are you on about? “So now, about 25% of our population are over-60, and almost all of those are fat and unfit for life.” Is that a fact? No, just some prejudice you have given voice to.
Life expectancy is the wrong target. Quality of life is ignored.
Your point 1 just highlights the nonsense of a “free” NHS where there is little incentive for people to take responsibility for the result of their own lifestyle choices, but the costs must be imposed on others.
Your point 2. Your juxtaposed points are non-sequiturs. I am all in favour – if we are to have an inefficient health service with second class performance – of the over 75s not getting operations, as long as they are told this when young and they are allowed tax-deductible payments for an over 75 health insurance plan.
The NHS was never “free” . You pay up front through the tax system (assuming you work for a living) whether you use the service or not. Its a rubbish system which is why no other country has copied .. except perhaps Venezuela
It’s “free” at the point of treatment. Of course it’s paid for via taxes (on everything, income, goods, services, even when you die). And yes, it’s an awful system for providing healthcare – but then it is modelled on the communist system of which Attlee’s Labour Government was so enamoured.
Most western countries, except the USA, have some form of nationalised healthcare, which reduces the stresses at point of service, which is overall a good thing, and allows for medical services to not be restricted to the wealthiest.
The problem with our many nationalised healthcare systems is they are now in truth owned (policy wise) by the medical-industrial complex, and the focus has shifted from acute care services to chronic care services (geriatrics and incurable illnesses). Nationalised healthcare could never pay for that, so in the end, services end up being skewed once more.
For our nationalised healthcare policies to function healthily once more, we need a return to acute care policies, and HEALTH prevention, rather than lifelong “treatments”. And our policy makers need to stop obsessing over life extension. We menopause at 50, that tells us something about the Homo sapiens (Latin binomial for humans, flagged???) natural life expectancy…
It’s also worth remembering that in 2019 the average age of death in the UK was 81.3 years. Last time I checked, the average age of death “with” Covid was 82.4.
I’m coming up to 76. Never been in hospital (fingers crossed) am the same weight as I was 30 years ago, that’s just under 11stone. If I had something seriously wrong with me and was refused treatment I would scream blue bloody murder. Maybe wait till your 75 and see how you feel then.
It’s not the same people pushing both narratives, so your point is moot. Death is normal, and the obsession with life extension in western society is ludicrous, and impossible to pay for. This is why medical-industrial complex now own us, because idiots are addicted to the delusional Fountain of Youth.
Indeed. ONS data shows the 2020 all-cause death rate was lower than it used to be every single year prior to 2008 i.e. for over 80% of many people’s lives.
I would have been considerably more persuaded if any of those now driven by their hysteria to the fainting couch could produce the slightest scrap of evidence from their papers or diaries from that period expressing their horror at the death rate and their determination to battle it.
Precisely.
So therefore, why has the nation turned into a bunch of terrified spastics in a mere twelve years?
Good question. Safetyism. Infantilisation. Social media. In 1969, 4 million died of flu. We landed on the moon. 3 million have died of COVID and we’re injecting our children with experimental gene therapies.
No.
See : Counting deaths involving coronavirus: a year in review Sarah Caul ONS January 12 2021
Bearing in mind that all the figures she quotes are still provisional because of the delay in coroner’s courts at the moment.
Or you can look at all cause excess mortality graphs on EUROMOM or Our World in Data or on John Burn-Murdoch’s twitter feed if you prefer pretty pictures.
Agreed
You are only going on reported deaths, which is universally acknowledged as being lamentably short of the actual figure. Who knows at this stage what the final death toll will be.
To date, two people of my acquaintance, in previous good health, have died suddenly within two weeks of their second dose of the experimental vaccine. Another fit and healthy woman friend was struck blind (irreversible vascular damage in both eyes). In none of these cases does their family seem to want to make a link with the injection, so the deaths/injuries have not been reported via the MHRA yellow card system. These are the deaths that are massively under-reported (about 1300 post-vaccine deaths so far officially reported according to MHRA latest figures). Whereas the rule that anyone who dies, of whatever cause, within 28 days of a positive Covid test must be counted as a “Covid death” makes it more likely the number of so-called Covid deaths is substantially exaggerated.
Universally acknowledged that many deaths had nothing to do with Covid.
we know currently that it is much lower than reported. Unfortunately the intentional fog surrounding numbers of actual deaths FROM COVID will take years to decipher.
its unlikely to be above 0.3% globally. Based on extrapolation of real world data collected from the Diamond Princess. Most of these deaths will be in life limited individuals, and over time the excess mortality will level out, as the virus becomes endemic. although the vaccine roll-out may well interfere with the natural course of herd immunity, unfortunately.
I wish it would be universally acknowledged that the number of deaths is a totally misleading statistic. Why not years of life lost? Or even better, years of quality life lost? That would put things into perspective!
“You are only going on reported deaths, which is universally acknowledged as being lamentably short of the actual figure.”
What happens to all the ‘unreported’ dead bodies? Is there a mass grave somewhere?
By “universally acknowledged”, I presume you are excluding evidence that UK figures have been over-reported by up to 25%? And, since for two years in a row, the excess death rate has fallen back below the 5 year average, it doesn’t require an advanced degree in mathematics to estimate the final death toll – some considerable way short of the 4 million who died of flu the year we landed on the moon.
I agree with the principle, but not your maths. Assuming 130,000 deaths and 67m population, Covid has killed 0.002 (rounded) of the UK population, or 0.2% – still a very small proportion, but not quite as small as you calculated
130,000 is higher than the figure now being admitted to. They struck off a huge number (about 25%), taking it down to below 100,000 for England, and even with the other three parts of the nation included, we’re nowhere near your figure. And that’s by ONS admission.
Wasn’t it a 33% correction?
You may be right, it may be more than I’d thought.
When ? and where is this indicated on the ONS website ?
aaaahhhh but there is so much money to be made… I am not being cinical sadly…
‘…and if you live in one where lots of people don’t trust the British establishment for whatever reason,’
But they all want to live here…
To be fair, I don’t trust the British establishment either, but I still got the jab because I’m sick of lock down and want this hell to end.
And why will you, or any number of people getting the vaccine, make the Govt end the restrictions? It is clear they will always find an excuse to keep the restrictions: vaccine refusers, variants, international travel, virtue signalling etc.
Any particular reason why the government should wish to prolong the lockdown. Perhaps all those party contributions from hedge fund managers shorting the economy might be the answer.
Exactly so, follow the money.
Of course I wasn’t actually being serious but I have never actually seen an Unherd BTL comment that gave serious reasons as to why the Government should want to keep restrictions any longer than necessary.
Because the powerful always want more power. This is not something new, we see it every single time there’s any excuse for additional power grabs. Governments have grown to bigger behemoths than they were ever supposed to be.
The claims that Covid-19 was created for the vaccines and not the other way round become more plausible by the day. On the principle of following the money for the perpetual / annual benefit of big Pharma, Fauci, Vallance, van Tam etc are all connected to either the vaccine manufacturers and/or in some cases to the ‘gain of function’ experiments that were taking place in Wuhan prior to this whole sh*tshow kicking off (being rolled out?). The author’s one-sided, patronising and borderline racially divisive article is state-sponsored cheerleading of the worst kind.
Fund managers shorting the economy? What planet are you on? Have you looked at the global stock market indices for the last year?
Conversely, I suspect that those people getting vaccinated who are not at any risk of suffering with Covid-19 are actually prolonging this hell. (Almost everybody under about 50). The endgame for the Gov (Gove!) is to introduce the ID passport at which point all our freedoms and civil liberties will be imperilled.
trouble is, if we comply we are just condemning ourselves to constant interference. Like the fiasco at the airports with shoes and liquids we will have to mess about with masks and hand sanitisers (which are useless) and go through vaccinations and vaccine status checks for everything, ad infinitum. For a disease that is mild in the majority of healthy folk. Don’t give in!
They all want to live here and they all want to change things here more to their own liking.
It’s not about “cause” but about which genetic subpopulations have the most historical exposure to coronaviruses, and which don’t. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Asian populations have much more experience with coronaviruses and are therefore the least affected, Caucasians are more affected, and first nations bloodlines in the Americas are most affected, it’s all about genetics.
Chiver’s thinking will always remain clouded for as long as he confuses “hesitancy” with “informed refusal”.
In have written to my Health Board inviting them to explain why, in their “vaccination letter” inviting me to participate in the trial of a novel, highly experimental gene-based medicinal product with no completed safety trial or track record of administration in humans, they failed to note that the pathogenic agent for which an “emergency use” justification was procured presents a lower risk to me than many routine hazards, including driving; that the experimental medicinal product is being administered under a temporary licensing arrangement under which the normal insistence on long term safety demonstration has been set aside; and that my normal right of recourse to damages via civil prosecution has been removed from me in a recent Act of Parliament targetting this unlicensed experimental medicinal product. I’ve further asked them to explain how they think they have met their legal duties under Supreme Court Judgement Montgomery vs Lanarkshire Health Board setting out their duties to warn me of these factors, and their ethical duties under Nuremberg Code (1947) to ensure I am sufficiently informed so as to be able to give informed consent to their proposed medical trial.
It turns out the hesitant party is the Health Board. I have proof of delivery of the letter. I have no reply.
An excellent response!
I suspect they put it in the out tray marked “pompous know-it-all ass”.
I think it can be safely assumed which category you fall into. That was a very sensible and constructive post compared to yours.
You must be truly terrified….
Terrified of what? If you mean being stuck in a lift or even worse finding myself seated next to him at a dinner, then you are damn right, I would be terrified. The sheer pomposity of the whole letter in response to a perfectly reasonable and government sanctioned invitation to have a vaccine is breathtaking. “It turns out the hesitant party is the Health Board”. I bet they are (not!) and most likely the letter ended quite rightly being used as a paper airplane winging its tedious way to the nearest waste paper basket.
Then you clearly understand little about how vaccines work: if you’ve had yours, what are you so afraid of?
A ‘perfectly reasonable and government sanctioned invitation’? The latter part is true, but what is so perfectly reasonable about injecting billions of perfectly healthy people with an experimental vaccine rolled out under emergency use authorisation? With vaccines that have not yet completed Phase III trials and whose manufacturers do not even know themselves what they do to prevent infection or transmission, let alone side-effects and mortality – because there is not yet adequate data to analyse. These same manufacturers who have ‘government sanctioned’ indemnity against prosecution or litigation in the event things turn out badly?
If you know the answer to any of these rather fundamental questions, do share your wisdom with us. If none of them have occurred to you, then you are either credulous to a dangerous degree or don’t care to think critically for yourself.
We should all be asking the questions Richard has listed and many more.
When I suggested you were terrified, what I meant is that the government’s propaganda and media hysteria has clearly worked on you.
Only if their definition of pomposity includes asking questions of supposed ‘experts’.
That’s entirely possible, Philip. After all, rather than spending last summer recruiting and training ICU staff to prepare for an entirely foreseeable rise in winter respiratory infection, this is the Health Board that had us stand in our back gardens and bang on saucepans with wooden spoons. Dismissing a letter enquiring about their compliance with the law and international ethical conventions would not be inconsistent.
There is currently no data supporting the idea that these covid vaccines stop the spread of infections.
Think otherwise? Take this challenge:
Good luck.
Exactly, while few in the MSM and Govt. like to mention this this, the vaccine is never going to stop spread of infection nor could it, The vaccine is designed to be support for the immune system in responding to the virus when caught, not as something that stops it spreading. It’s as if some see the vaccine as creating a star-trek like force field around the body that stops it getting in. It will always get in and be spread, what matters is how our immune systems respond, either naturally or via support from a vaccine when it does enter our body. The vaccine does not nor will ever prevent transmission nor is it designed to.
Except there is such data
Yes. They show the opposite!
No there isn’t from a bona fida entity — unfortunately its all a bit of an uphill battle since all medical schools are now sponsored by pharma companies and have been since 1995..wake up its all a scam
I have just seen an article with such graphs. They assume that from the date at which vaccines were introduced that future deaths with no vaccine could be predicted by plotting a trend. This is a big assumption.
The reporting system for deaths, certainly in the UK and USA seems to have been corrupted and determined by an unreliable Covid test in the previous days before death.
It is much simpler than that. If the vaccines are effective:
(a) it should be very easy to look at a graph of covid deaths and pinpoint the moment in which vaccinations begin.
(b) the pattern of covid deaths should be distinctly different from before the vaccines.
(c) the pattern of covid deaths should be distinctly different from the patter of covid deaths in countries with no or lower vaccinations.
(d) it should possible to predict what the pattern of covid deaths will be going forward, based on the % vaccinated.
a) Wrong. This would only be true if millions of jabs were given out at once, with no other interventions.
b) Wrong. If a vaccine reduces deaths by e.g. 90% then the same proportions would die as before in each group, just lower numbers for all, but the same pattern.
c) Wrong. For the same reason as b)
d) It is. In each age group, vaccines reduce the risk of illness and death.
Ok champ. Let’s do some proper science. Your hypothesis is that vaccines are effective. 57 million doses have now been given to over 36 million Brits.
Make a specific prediction that can be observed in the real world that would verify that they are effective. And we’ll see.
And yet, it hasn’t. The infection decline rate has remained constant.
John- your missing the point , perhaps on purpose to get a reaction. Covid death rates and medical certification and definition was altered by the CDC in February 2019…yes 2019 … its all a hoax
Why should it be very easy to look at a graph of covid deaths and pinpoint the moment in which vaccinations begin? You’d expect the trend to continue much as before until a fair proportion have been vaccinated, and then there’d be some lag on top of that.
That would be true of an illness that killed indiscriminately across the population and in great numbers, but this is not such an illness.
Statistically speaking, because this coronavirus barely kills anyone below 70, mass vaccination won’t have a statistically visible effect. The effect will be most visible among vaccinated seniors, that’s the only relevant group.
yes so you would look at infection rates and hospitalisations amongst the previously most vulnerable. Has this fallen significantly? How would you separate the lockdown effect from other effects?
Well said. The only other sensitive groups are the obese and the drug users.
I have prepared this visualisation. The rate of fatal infection decline has remained constant as vaccine doses have increased from 2m to 20m doses. In other words, vaccination is not required to explain the observed decline in fatal infection due to seasonality. https://twitter.com/_richardlyon/status/1394311176289402880?s=21
You would be better served looking at John Burn – Murdoch’s graphs on Twitter and in the FT which show a very definite vaccination effect both in Israel and the UK for crinkly deaths, hospitalisations and cases compared with younger age groups.
These are on a log scale, so steepening descent means rate of decrease among vaccinated groups grows every day.
Almost a complete waste of time looking at IFR, CFR or deaths in general because of the confounders involved in any death statistic and the uncertainties around the denominator for both IFR and CFR calculations.
Great reply Elaine – PCR test is a DNA test that’s what it is designed for…dead cells still get picked up hence cases rising but in reality the testing is flawed ‘
PCR tests are manufactured to contain specific primers – strings of amino acids that will bind to specific target regions of the Sars Cov 2 genome (or of any viral genome – you can manufacture a string of amino acids to match any bit of any viral genome). The test mechanism amplifies these bound sections of the viral genome and these are what is measured in a quantitative sense. The Lighthouse labs in the UK have primers that will bind to 3 different bits of Sars Cov 2 – N (nucleoprotein) ORF 1a/b (open reading frame 1a/b) and S (spike).
The Ct threshold for Pillar 1 testing (health care workers) is 40 – they want a sensitive test so that that there is no chance of sending an infected HCW back into the workplace. This does mean that some of those who test positive will be in the recovery phase and simply shedding bits of viral RNA and will not be infectious. However, they did have the disease so they were a “case” at some point.
This article from way back in June gives a nice introduction and history to the PCR test :
“Primer design for quantitative real-time PCR for the emerging Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2”
well done Alan – the test is actually a DNA test that measures dead cells — therefore if you get a positive it could be a false flag.. but you are down as a rising case… its all a bit of a mess and corrupt led by Pharms being allowed to fund medical schools here in the UK since 1995. Cant trust any body now thanks to corruption and the money trail
You are partially correct. The reduction in cases was due almost entirely to people not mixing due to lockdown.
Deaths came down faster than previous lockdowns but this can’t be seen on the graph except by a slightly steeper gradient).
However, vaccination will prevent deaths rising in the future to such high levels again. It may or may not prevent cases rising but a much higher proportion will be mild or asymptomatic cases.
Almost time to drop all restrictions (21/6 seems about right) and as soon as we have done that it will be time to start shipping 50% or so of our vaccines abroad.
Coronavirus immunity is short-lived, 2nd doses will lead to 3rd and 4th doses, and future panics and lockdowns when the next silly virus arrives in a couple of years, and humanity’s future will now look like this for the foreseeable future!
No thank you!
Nobody knows how long Covid19 immunity will last. The fact that those who recovered from SARS in the early 2000s still show an immune reaction to SARS-CoV-2 tends to suggest that (a) immunity could last decades, and (b) natural immunity has a far wider response than we’re being told – ie it will easily cope with all the frighteningly-named “variants”.
good stuff
I only wish more people like you lived in this planet. Right now it´s full of Tom Shivers.
I am with you Trishia– i trust my body not that lot with a needle –
Cheating a bit, Israel’s graph has gone way down since they started vaccinating in December.
The fact that there has been a surge in Covid-19 deaths when the vaccines are rolled out doesn’t mean that they don’t produce immunity to Covid-19.
It means that getting the jab causes your immune system to tank for up to 3 weeks.
So, jabbing the frail and vulnerable could be just the ticket to make sure that they get infected with the virus. Sending them to vaccination centres or sending people to jab them could be breaking their shielding in exactly the right way to give them that extra shove that leads to their demise.
Great reply Stewart- covid death rates – no coincidence flu seems to have been eradicated ..oh wait , you take a ‘test’ its positive ( false flag and includes dormant dead cells with the apparent covid virus) .. so in a nutshell cases are measured by a system that is ment for measuring DNA so doesn’t actually capture real data— its all a scare to control the masses
Meanwhile, experts like Peter Doshi, senior editor for the British Medical Journal raise concerns and are ignored.
Quote: After rollout under emergency authorisation, manufacturers of covid-19 vaccines now have their sights on regulatory approval. But what’s the rush, asks Peter Doshi, and is just six months of data from now unblinded trials acceptable?
As hundreds of millions of people around the world get vaccinated, it may seem like wordsmithing to highlight the fact that none of the covid-19 vaccines in use are actually “approved.” Through an emergency access mechanism known as Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA), the products being rolled out still technically remain investigational.”
Factsheets distributed to vaccinees are clear: “There is no FDA approved vaccine to prevent covid-19.”
The approval-authorisation distinction is often misunderstood by the media,even in the scientific press. But it was the focus of much discussion back in September 2020.
Covid-19 vaccines: In the rush for regulatory approval, do we need more data? BMJ
Pick five countries. Look at their Covid deaths graph. Find out if every Covid claimed death was proven by autopsy.
also find how many cycles were used to define a Covid case.
While looking at the graph, also find out the day the vaccine programme started and whether or not diagnosis processes changed.
For example, the US and the CDC:
Quote, article by Kit Knightly.
Person A has not been vaccinated. They test positive for Covid using a PCR test at 40 cycles and, despite having no symptoms, they are officially a “covid case”.
Person B has been vaccinated. They test positive at 28 cycles, and spend six weeks bedridden with a high fever. Because they never went into a hospital and didn’t die they are NOT a Covid case.
Person C, who was also vaccinated, did die. After weeks in hospital with a high fever and respiratory problems. Only their positive PCR test was 29 cycles, so they’re not officially a Covid case either.
The CDC is demonstrating the beauty of having a “disease” that can appear or disappear depending on how you measure it.
To be clear: If these new policies had been the global approach to “Covid” since December 2019, there would never have been a pandemic at all.
So good old identity politics and perpetual victimhood agenda pushed by do gooders is damaging to everyone, largely that community though?
This happens in so many ways, vaccine refusal and not even basic adherence to sensible anti Covid measures are great examples. These cause higher deaths in those communities, and the BBC et al will blame systemic racism. It’s a feedback loop of failure.
I had the same thought. We’ve been told since the start that covid is worse with ethnics and that this is “because racism”. Yet the same group ignore the rules and have lower vaccine pickup, so the reason for higher fatalities is self inflicted. Of course that’s not something that the media or government will ever say.
Oh for christ sakes – the vaccine has ZERO to do with why some ethnic minorities, in particular black and Asian, have had more problems with Covid. It’s been shown time and time again that Vitamin D is everything to do with immune responses and that this ethnic population naturally has much lower Vitamin D absorption etc. hence the push to give doctors and patients in this category great doses of Vitamin D. Do some research instead of listening to cretinous reporters.
But the reason for less Vitamin D absorption is probably that darker skins are not able to absorb efficiently in northern countries. And that means some people may question the presence of those people , that would be racist. Although is it less racist to say pale skinned, red haired people are not suited to hot climates?
It’s 9.30pm and 31°C here, which suits this pale red-head fine.
You don’t say where “here “ is.
Also at 9.30 pm there is no sun which, as a redhead you must avoid. (My mother was a redhead).
The sun is what helps dark skins absorb vitamin D.
Everyone who can avoids the sun here.
Yes, I agree. My Pakistani in laws don’t go out in the sun unnecessarily. But you cannot avoid it completely. And the poor people have to be out in it much more.
Fearing dark skin, associated with the poor, increasing numbers of the well-off here appear to avoid direct sunlight almost completely, only encountering it between buildings and their SUVs. I wonder what their vitamin D levels are like.
If you read English novelists like Jane Austen, you’ll notice how alabaster skin was valued by her characters. The industrial revolution, cooping the poor up in factories all day, turned that around – a sun-tan became proof you had the money to avoid being indoors all day all year.
Darker skin shades evolved over time in areas of more direct sunlight, paler skin shades evolved to maximise sun rays due to lower sun position. Darker skinned people did not evolve to live in high latitudes, as paler skinned people did not evolve to live in more direct sunlight latitudes.
Biological facts are not racism.
It’s worth watching Prof Tim Spector (ZOE study) talking about Vitamin D. He talks about studying it at length and doing trials years ago. He was really optimistic early on that it was a panacea. He speaks of his dismay at poor results from trials.
I personally took Vitamin D over the last winter on the low cost might work basis. But it should be remembered that taking Vitamin D tablets is experimental and people do take too much which is toxic.
There’s also the point that lower Vitamin D levels are a sign of someone not getting outside a lot in the fresh air, and of a poor diet. Taking pills to fix this is a poor solution.
Yes, there is no real substitute for the natural absorption of vitamins.
Because as with most lay discussions of biology, nuance is lost.
A majority of the population have sufficient vitamin D, and for those with sufficient vitamin D, further ingestion of vitamin D makes no difference.
The vitamin D issue was only relevant to those with vitamin D deficiencies, this means higher latitudes, more sedentary lifestyles, and darker skinned people at higher latitudes. Those with vitamin D deficiency benefit from supplementation and/or healthier life choices, for the rest of us, more vitamin D is pointless.
It’s not the only reason for higher Covid issues in some groups, for example existing lower health. But lower vaccine uptake and still having 100s of people at indoor events has compounded existing issues.
In those communities? Vaccine scepticism and refusal seem to be rampant among commenters on this page.
A fair point except this isn’t a physical community. If 95% of people on your actual community are vaccinated you can be sceptical more safely. If only 50% are vaccinated then people might be less cocky.
This is exactly why in the UK measle vaccine refusers can say “didn’t hurt me”, where as in parts of Africa its far more serious. Of course the anti measle vaccine positron in sone areas – its not experimental or limited in supply – is a pertinent point
A surprising amount of vitriol here. This needs to be looked at calmly, with a positive and negative balance sheet.
Covid is not going away, people will die from it as with other illnesses. Let’s remember the original save lives and protect the NHS. There’s no suggestion that the NHS is at serious risk of being overwhelmed and many lives will have been saved by vaccinations.
The restrictions and lockdowns are ruining livelihoods, killing people who have missed treatment for other conditions and creating a mental health crisis.
The balance has changed from 15 months ago. The ending of restrictions must go ahead in June, alongside a huge drive to increase vaccinations in the most impacted areas. Those areas may have to exercise self restraint but not legal restrictions.
This is still essentially a free country. Those who balance the benefits and risks and choose not to be vaccinated cannot expect freedom for the majority to be sacrificed.
Very good comment.
As far as I am aware, those who choose not to be vaccinated are not pushing for restrictions to be kept in place, in order to ‘protect’ them. They are just as keen to get back to a normal life – hence why some may have already been doing just that.
This appears to be more an excuse for the government to justify their death grip on our freedom and way of life. Even if 100% of the population were to be jabbed I’m pretty sure they’d find another excuse to continue down this route.
Yes agree 100%
There’s a bizarre militancy in the comments that seems to suggest that people who are pro vaccine are also therefore pro lockdown and subservient drones of the government.
It’s not a binary choice…
It’s healthy to be sceptical of the vaccine to some degree – it was rolled out in unprecedented haste. And yet this haste was due to an unprecedented amount of resources and effort being put into it. This must also be considered.
Add to that that so far the vaccines have caused next to no issues, although we may not know the long term impact until later. This is also a risk – but it’s perfectly reasonable to gauge that this is a risk well worth taking given the tried and tested mechanism of these vaccinations (they have a very safe track record of working well with many other diseases, if not this specific one because of course it is new).
Furthermore it is quite a reasonable position to be pro vaccination for a majority of people because it offers us the best chance of negating further lockdowns and trying to arrest the economic damage they are causing.
These are the most lethal vaccines ever rolled out by some margin in terms of side effects and death. 4000 world wide as far as we know. That might be worth it in terms of those most at risk, for the rest the answer in pre covidian times would have been no. Not worth the risk .
Unless you are a youngish woman or someone with particular vulnerabilities, I suspect you are wrong. At least a better starting point would be to say that the risks from the vaccine are much less than from the virus, then consider any special cases where the balance may be less clear-cut or even in the other direction.
There is now a link to myocarditis from the Pfizer vaccine in young men aged 20 to 39, very small at present but may well increase as more people vaccinated. These are people most unlikely to be affected by COVID-19 it’s definitely something to consider.
If the risk factor is now very small, how can it increase as more people are vaccinated ?
Because not many people in that age group have been vaccinated, as more are the case rate is likely to increase as it did in the young women with blood clots.
Someone dear to me in France told me that her brother, a pharmacist and obliged to be vaccinated, said that while he thought it as well that their parents, in their eighties and have had various ilnesses, be vaccinated, he was against younger people in good health, getting the infamous “jab”. All this pressure to have it when the ‘flu shot is left a matter of choice, encourages thoughts of conspiracies.
Can you point me towards some substantive evidence of the claim that these are the most lethal vaccines ever rolled out?
Approximately 1.5 billion people have been vaccinated to date (globally). 4000, if true is an exceptionally small number, even if accurate.
Are those 4000 people to have died from what precisely? Or are they people who have died from unknown/unsubstantiated causes that have also been vaccinated?
Given that we have been vaccinating starting with the oldest and sickest it would be very hard to determine at this early stage what the cause was precisely. This is the other side to the same coin that says that we cannot tell how these will have an impact on our long term health.
Quite honestly it doesn’t matter. The point is that mass vaccination is unnecessary. For the vast majority of people covid 19 is a mild illness that can be treated with over the counter medication (NHS111) Why is the fear being perpetuated. please refer to ‘sunk cost fallacy’ add to that some very rich people getting significantly richer and the answer is simple, human nature.
The VAERS system in the USA has recorded over 4,000 deaths attributed to the vaccine, and the UK’s Yellow Card system has recorded over 1,000. These statistics are freely available from government websites, compiled using their reporting systems. In addition, most observers reckon adverse reactions are grossly under-reported.
I believe in a typical year 200 odd Americans die from adverse reactions to flu shots. Make of that what you will, but these vaccines are not without risk.
“Attributed to the vaccine” by whom? Do you just mean “after the vaccine”? I googled for the 1000 deaths number and didn’t come up with anything. Where is your evidence?
The UK information is here. You’ll have to do a bit of hunting around. There are some reports with totals lower down. So far, 370 deaths for Pfizer, and 756 for AZ.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting#annex-1-vaccine-analysis-print
As the page you linked to says, these are not “attributed to the vaccine”. Rather: “Reporters are asked to submit Yellow Card reports even if they only have a suspicion that the medicine may have caused the adverse reaction. The existence of an adverse reaction report in the print does not necessarily mean that the vaccine has caused the suspected reaction.”
Probably just a coincidence then? Let’s ignore them, and all the thousands of life changing injuries, like blindness. Nothing to see here…..
If you think there is something to see here, demonstrate that these numbers occur at a higher rate than you’d expect in that population anyway. Otherwise, it’s all just post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Fascinating cognitive dissonance, as any death within 28 days of a “positive” covid test is classified as a covid death, (with covid) whereas with the covid vaccine, we should refrain from counting “unknown/unsubstantiated causes that have also been vaccinated”? This is why constantly changing goalposts and definitions is bad science. If people want “with” and “within 28 days of”, it has to be across the board.
In both cases, the question must be “how many of those people would you have expected to die within that period in a normal year, regardless of whether they had disease/vax?” When the 28 day limit was introduced, the worry was that numbers were low enough that the old “tested positive, hit by a bus, counted as COVID” story might be true.
So, do your good science: what proportion of those who die within 28 days of the vaccine/test would have been expected to die anyway? Simply complaining that there’s a double standard or insinuating that the vaccine is dodgy, as you are doing, is not good science.
4000+ is the US number so far; the number in Europe is over 8000+, and very likely underreported.
I’ve a feeling – I haven’t checked – that 4000 number for the USA is deaths reported to VAERS following a vaccination.
Is there a reason why covid deaths are supposed to be over counted, but post vaccine deaths are ‘likely underreported’?
Plus, we undercount them if using the same parameters as for Covid, as with Covid, it’s any death within 28 days of a “positive” PCR test.
Unfortunately it does not, to a great degree, matter if there was “an unprecedented amount of resources and effort being put into” the vaccine. Time is still needed to determine the side effects etc as is now becoming clear from blood clots and other problems.
Indeed I agree in that specific point about time to measure side effects – although the blood clots issues have been demonstrated to be wholly overblown/non-existent.
The unprecedented resource point I mention was because people were suspicious of how quickly the vaccine came out. I am just pointing out that I think it’s unsurprising it came out so quickly.
All fair points – I don’t outright disagree. But I come down on the side of preferring the (in my view small) risk from vaccination, over perpetual lock downs.
I am not pro lockdown, but understand that the government and an uncomfortably large proportion of the population are so risk averse that they support this. This illness is far worse than a bad flu, and is a danger to those especially over 65, and so needs policy dealing with it – but I don’t think warrants the panicked life-destroying restrictions
Vaccination is a route out that might satisfy the most.
You actually think taking the vaccine will end lockdown?
No it’s up to the government and people ultimately – but by reducing infection rates through vaccination it will likely happen sooner rather than later.
You have obviously not heard of the Zanzibar variant which may be more or less contagious, more or less deadly and vaccine resistant
What about the doctors who are treating covid patients with drugs? Why do we always need a ‘vaccine’ for every thing? Why jab millions when you can treat the specific people who get a serious case of covid? The so-called vaccine has been the end game from the beginning.
Indeed! Why was Dr Raoult suppressed and punished for suggesting a softer approach which was at least worth investigating? I remember a doctor many years ago who only prescribed when he was certain it was necessary. He was struck down by a speeding car when he was walking from his office to his car one afternoon. I have wondered ever since if that was an accident. Big Pharma doesn’t like anyone who doesn’t follow its rules.
The claims that Covid-19 was created for the vaccines and not the other way round become more plausible by the day.
On the principle of following the money for the perpetual / annual benefit of big Pharma, Fauci, Vallance, van Tam etc are all connected to either the vaccine manufacturers and/or in some cases to the ‘gain of function’ experiments that were taking place in Wuhan prior to this whole sh*tshow kicking off (being rolled out?).
The author’s one-sided, patronising and borderline racially divisive article is state-sponsored cheerleading of the worst kind.
IFR of the flu, 0.1, IFR of covid, 0.23, covid is twice as bad, so still harmless to the vast majority, effects same age groups, although thankfully the flu has miraculously disappeared, after causing 6 to 10 more times deaths over a period of a few months last year, until PHE decided to lump all respiratory illnesses together.
Interesting thanks Duncan
This comment is very confusing to me. You say it’s healthy to be sceptical of the vaccine “to some degree” and you rightly mention why, i.e. because of the “unprecedented haste” with which they were rolled out. Then you claim that “resources” and “effort” basically replace time, meaning long-term study data, which I find is nonsensical. Then you claim there have been “next to no issues” so far but note that the long-term impact will only be known later. You clearly have not looked into the ever-growing databases that record severe reactions/deaths, eg the VAERS data base in the US. Knowingly, only a fraction of actual cases is being reported. So then you say that vaccines have a good safety track record, when these vaccines we are talking about have nothing whatsoever to do with our traditional type vaccines. And then to say that being pro-vaccination offers the best chance of avoiding further measures.. You see, I call this cognitive-dissonance but I don’t blame you because this is clearly the product of government propaganda, which has been absolutely relentless.
You have extrapolated a lot from what I wrote – most of it not correct. And inadvertently prove my point by accusing me of being duped by “government propaganda”. For example:
It is nonsensical as it’s not what I was saying Whilst I was not perhaps clear enough the point I was making is that people were suspicious (in a conspiracy theory kind of way) that they found a vaccination so fast, as if they had it pre-prepared.
I agree with you about time to test properly, in a perfect world we would have time to. But this is not a perfect world and we cannot afford to wait until we have 3 years of clinical trials behind this vaccination.
Granted mRNA (pfizer, moderna) method has not been widely used in vaccines (but has been in cancer treatment), but somewhat ironically it is the AstraZeneca vaccine, which follows a more traditional method, which is the one that people (and governments) have taken issue with.
Hardly government propaganda stuff is it?
The Astra Zeneca vaccines are also not based on the more traditional method of action, eg the attenuated type. The technology has been used before in Ebola or Dengue vaccines but never before have they been used as part of a mass-vaccination campaign. The Dengue fever vaccination campaign in the Philippines eg had to be suspended due to a stark increase of vaccinated kids suffering from unusually severe cases of Dengue. The point I’m making is: none of these vaccines are. based on any meaningful long-term research data that could alleviate the concerns that many scientist voice. Unfortunately only very few of these voices are being heard by our government and media or they are unscientifically and unfairly silenced by being called “anti-vaxxers”. The whole situation is preposterous and I have no doubt history will not look favourably upon our current leaders, including the WHO.
I don’t disagree with you on this – all fair points. There is an alarming tendency to call people with real issues with the vaccines anti vaxers when it is patently not the case.
I still come down on the side of preferring to get vaccinated however, as I feel the risks are worth it.
And yet, you’re betting on a hunch that you know the associated risk, while accepting that only time will tell.
Taking a chance is not the same as knowing the risk.
And this is where in times of experimental procedures, individual risk assessment is paramount.
only a fraction of actual cases is being reported.
Obviously, there is no evidence for that. VAERS, on the other hand, lists reported possible reactions to vaccines and deaths following vaccines – with nothing to say either are in fact due the vaccines.
I agree and remain hesitant. I wonder too why Unherd, which purports to provide alternative points of view, does not give space to a writer who doubts the vaccine’s worth. For the most part, Unherd’s contributors appear to follow the conventional take on this and most other matters. .The alternative “unherd” voices at Unherd seem to be in the comments rather than in the articles, with a few exceptions such as one by Hoeullebeck a few weeks ago. As an addendum, It is worthwhile saying that the vaccine does not prevent catching Covid though it does claim to mitigate its effects.
“They have a very safe track record of working well with many other diseases”. Completely untrue. No mRNA vaccine has ever been used or even tested extensively before. There is absolutely no long term track record (not even a three or four year record which is normal for standard delivery method vaccine development never mind mRNA) for mRNA vaccines. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are experimental. Full stop.
You echo my thoughts exactly on this topic.
I‘m pro vaccine. Just not new, untried vaccines that potentially risk my long term health
I agree with most of your points, apart from the increase of vaccinations. Those who do balance the benefits and risks of these vaccinations and base their decision on clear-headed, critical contextual analysis, should come to the conclusion that the current mass vaccinations are completely irresponsible.
You seem to be saying that clear-headed people will agree with you. We all think that!
Good, especially’..self-restraint but not legal restrictions…’ Listening to one of the fools on R4 news yesterday trying to start this hare running again (‘…. it’s so confusing- if it’s legal why shouldn’t you? The govt must be clearer…’ etc etc) was deeply depressing.
“Those who balance the benefits and risks and choose not to be vaccinated cannot expect freedom for the majority to be sacrificed.” We don’t. Where did you get the idea we want to restrict anyone’s freedom?
I suspect you are correct that the unvaccinated want freedom as well, unfortunately the idiots in government …………
Your final sentence seems to be assuming that unvaccinated people are demanding restrictions stay in place. That could not be further from the truth so far as I am concerned and although I cannot speak for others, I suspect I am not alone.
The people who chose not to be vaccinated tend to be indepedent-minded and so are highly unlikely to endorse restrictions.
‘This is essentially a free country’, as long as everyone gets vaccinated? I have had covid. I am immune. I am happy.. yes happy, to get it again should that happen as it is likely to be seasonal although there is no evidence that anyone has been re-infected as yet. Mu immunity is strong and full and protects the vulnerable. We appear to have lost all sense of reason, perspective and common sense.
You missed out the bit where lots of people died because the NHS was, for a long time, the Covid-only Service. You could die of anything else and nobody minded much.
Again I’m not seeing any serious argument from Mr Chivers against ending lockdown measures, despite the chastening tone.
Basing arguments on ‘it seems to be 50% more transmissible’ is farcical if you (TOM CHIVERS) can’t find facts due to a lack of them just like the govt.are doing as they base their statements on ‘it seems to be ….’ and so far they have been wrong about variants every single time no increased mortality strains, (variants) come and they go thats why you have to have a flu jab every year its just more blatant scaremongering, how much does the govt pay you TC ?
What a bizarre article? More akin to propaganda actually. Chivers appears to believe that the problem is just a few “cranks” (and poor non-nationals). As if those who decline to be included in the mass experiment have no valid reason for such a decision. Furthermore he states “some vaccinated people will still die as a result of other people’s refusal to take the vaccine.”
He quotes a covid modeller as saying the unvaxxed will deprive cancer patients of much needed care. Eh, lockdowns anyone?
Disgraceful excuse for journalism. Chivers gives me the shivers.
Lockdowns, meaning restrictions on the reasons why people may leave the house and closure of certain premises, don’t deprive cancer patients of care. Getting health care has always been a legal reason to leave the house, and the hospitals haven’t been shut like the pubs have.
I’m disgusted by this article and the “dangerous unvaccinated” rhetoric flooding the media in general. It is EVERYWHERE. The unvaccinated are just perfect for the government to use as an excuse for yet more authoritarian governance re extending the lockdown and coercing people to take the jab. This article is clearly government propaganda. This vaccinated versus unvaccinated divide and conquer tactic is disgraceful. I might cancel my subscription.
Umm so much here that reflects the general tone of pseudo science and misinformation that characterises the last year…
So the rise in cases from 10 to 50 in Bedford is not huge
The Indian variant is not 50% more transmittable. That’s misinformation, if that were true the figures in India would be much much much higher. At present they are way below our 3rd wave highest
Still no published data from government that the vaccines stop transmission . If 90% of over 50s have been vaccinated then there is simply not enough population susceptible for any new variant to have an affect..
The failure to restrict travel from the Indian sub-continent is a good, concrete example of one of the many downsides to the dat be wacism mentality.
I suppose I am just ignorant white trash, but I live abroad, am over 50, have not had any injections and do not have any plans to have one. I have never liked taking medicine to sort unnecessary problems, so it is consistent with that.
The only thing is, being white, I wonder if without being injected I will have difficulty getting back into the UK when I next decide to visit?
Do yourself a favour and don’t ever come back. I have the same problem in reverse, without an unnecessary and potentially dangerous experimental synthetic drug I might never be able to get out of this woke hell hole.
“The only thing is, being white, I wonder if without being injected I will have difficulty getting back into the UK when I next decide to visit?”
Hopefully yes you will for being so wilfully stupid as to refuse the vaccination. It is a pity you can’t come over right now and have a week each in Bolton and Blackburn and see how you feel afterwards.
Only if ‘wilfully stupid’ means disagreeing with you.
I’m not getting ‘vaccinated’.
Reasons?
1) I know what ‘phase 3 human trials are due to be completed in January 2023‘ actually means.
2) I have an idea of my personal risk if I catch Covid-19. I have no idea of my personal risk if I take one of the ‘vaccines’. One is nature’s chance, the other is a deliberate action.
3) The recent changes to long held, medical definitions – such as ‘herd immunity’ and even ‘vaccine’ – make me highly suspicious.
4) As does the fanatical drive to ‘vaccinate’ everyone, with ever changing goalposts regarding government targets and ‘roadmaps’.
5) The ‘idiots’ in society now comprise those who are blaming the unvaccinated for continuing restrictions – ignoring the fact that it is HM Government imposing restrictions that have nothing whatsoever to do with ‘the science’…I wish to continue to annoy them.
6) COVID kills less than 0.2% of those infected, about the same as the Flu did in ’59 and ’68.
If you’re under 70 years old, the IFR of Covid-19 is 0.05% – less than half that of an average seasonal flu (source: John Ioannidis, the world’s most cited epidemiologist).
I’ll take my chances.
The IFR for Covid 19 is a moving feast – it depends how many people are infected, (always supposing you can work this out) and the accuracy of your mortality figures ; it depends on the age and co morbidities of the cohort you are looking at; it depends on where you are in the pandemic; it depends on the adequacy of your healthcare system etc.etc.
Just to provide a lovely graphical description of the variations inherent in this statistic I commend to you the Forest plots in this paper :
“A systematic review and meta-analysis of published research data on COVID-19 infection-fatality rates” Int J Infect. Dis. Meyerowitz-Katz
Overall, from 24 very heterogeneous studies the authors calculate an overall IFR of 0.68% (0.53%–0.82%) total range of 0.17% to 1.7%. Uncertainty rules and that is OK.
Totally agree, thanks. The hostility being heaped upon people who, for whatever reason, remain unvaccinated is disgusting and reminiscent of the darkest times of the 20th century.
Is Tom writing for the sake of penning something down? I only looked at the comments and mostly I am in agreement with them rather than the article. And I haven’t even read it! I suspected it would take that supercilious judgemental tone and looking at the comments, I was not wrong.
I have decided not to be vaccinated. There are many many all over the world who will make that choice. I pose no threat to anyone, any medical body or myself as I am pretty healthy but most importantly I don’t care for quick fixes nor to being coerced, nor judged.
The vaccines will have to be taken seasonally. This is not the end of this game.
I wrote something similar above. At “Unherd”. I find the free voices are in the comments sections rather in the articles which, with a few exceptions, very much follow the most conventional (I hate to say “establishment”) point of view.
I’d like to see “Unherd” give space to a writer who has doubts about the vaccine and its value. Auberon Waugh’s column in the Spectator was called “Another Voice” and there are still a few alternative commentators in France such as Phillipe Sollers and Michel Houellebec and some in the Spectator in its USA version as well as the traditional British one. One need not agree with them but they do provide stimulation.
It seems to me that the vax pushers, including Chivers, should cool it a little. There is no question that the rapid development of an array of vaccines was a phenomenal feat and that the mRNA vaccines represent a potentially very promising new technology. But it is also the case that the incidence of serious side effects, including death, from all the COVID vaccines, is at least an order of magnitude higher than for all vaccinations over the last 20 years combined. i.e. a little humility is called for.
So what is the best approach. Stop beating people over the head with a sledge hammer and let individuals make their own risk-benefit analysis. Clearly for those over the age of 60, vaccination is probably a no-brainer. But vaccinating young healthy adults whose risk of severe consequences should they acquire COVID is very very small seems a very risky proposition and in my view uncalled for. After all, one doesn’t vaccinate for a cold. Along the same lines, vaccinating children is not only an even riskier proposition but may very likely lead to all the vaccines being taken off the market. If an adult dies post-vaccination, there aren’t too many waves created in the current climate. If there are any deaths in children following vaccination, however, the uproar and backlash will be massive.
In terms of the vaccines themselves, the key issue is whether the side effects are due to the delivery vector (liposome for mRNA vaccines, adenovirus for DNA vaccines) or more likely due to the spike protein itself. All the current vaccines produce the spike protein (without the benefit of being stuck on a virus particle) and the spike protein itself is known to be pathogenic. It sticks to the endothelial lining of blood vessels and can easily trigger clotting. This is a serious business.
Lastly, anecdotally I have heard of many instances of significant side effects following vaccination. Since I live in the US we are only talking about the two mRNA vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, since the J&J adenovirus vaccine has minimal penetrance and the AZ vaccine doesn’t have an EUA. Almost everybody I know that had the Moderna vaccine (which has close to twice the mRNA dose of the Pfizer one) has had very severe side effects following the second dose. Not lethal ones, but ones like being stuck in bed for several days, splitting headaches, feeling sicker than they have ever felt in their lives, etc….. This should alert one that these vaccines are not without risk. One can be sure that if any of the regular vaccines that we all have had came with such side effects they would not be widely accepted or taken.
This is an abhorrent article that presupposes a) that Lockdowns are the only viable way to handle a pandemic – they are not; b) that the only way out of a lockdown is to develop a vaccinate or treatment, which is surely highly precarious and not at all guaranteed, and so may not be at all applicable for the next pathogen that turns up! Furthermore, given that the very large majority of the population are at no risk from severe illness from Covid-19, and given that this is a completely new “vaccine” technology that is licensed under emergency legislation with no long term testing, and is in fact still undergoing clinical trials until 2023; and given that the very high reductions in Covid-19 risk offered by the vaccines (95% etc) are RELATIVE RISK REDUCTIONS, not the ABSOLUTE RISK REDCUCTIONS of about 1%, why would anyone under 65 who is in full possession of the facts and not terrified out of their minds and not peer pressured / bullied into submission take this “vaccine”? My parents are 80+ and so it’s a very good cost/benefit outcome for them to have had it; but my 20 year old daughter – you have to be kidding! As as for the social responsibility / herd immunity arguments, well I’ve always taken that position myself with serious and highly contagious diseases like measles with an R rate of 11 (thus, needing 95% coverage to protect those that can’t have the vaccine, like babies); but the R rate for Sars Cov 2 is 3 which means we only need around 66% immunity and that is likely achievable with a combination of natural cross coronanvirus immunity, infection immunity, and the vaccination of the vulnerable or those who just think that they are vulnerable. So just leave us Covid-19 vaccines (only) sceptics alone! Given the scenario we have before us I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty for saying NON to the vaccines: they shouldn’t be the only way out of this mess and as currently formulated they could be a very risky one long term for a huge number of people that don’t need them.
What about fat people, have they made their own bed? Perhaps it’s time they paid the price for their gluttony with a tax surcharge for the £120m a day they cost the NHS . And those sunbathers need to lie in their skin cancer bed. Don’t get me started on all those smokers and drinkers let alone those middle class adrenaline junkies who expect us to pick up the tab when it all goes Pete Tong.
We don’t have our liberties curtailed due to fat people, sunbathers or middle class adrenaline junkies. We do accept that a simple payment health system like ours is whilst not ‘fair’, much easier. Also it’s very hard to judge the total net cost of various activities: So being fat, smoking and various poor choices will on average see you in hosptial earlier, costing the state money – but crucially you’ll die earlier, which will mean if you’re retirement age the state could save money.
Actually Luke the fat people who are fat because they have a very unhealthy diet of processed food which results in very poor gut health and inevitably a compromised immune system (hence why they drop like flies when Coronavirus is in town) are exactly the reason our liberties were curtailed. If you’re of a weak mind and you believe that lockdowns even do anything, then it’s the fat and unhealthy people we’re supposed to be protecting.
Seldom have I met a more compassionate response to to the human condition. Not wishing to negate the sense of personal responsibility but I do wonder if the issue of obesity is a little more complex. If the response to the pandemic shows us anything it is how easy it is to influence behaviour through the use of behavioural psychology. The real power of advertising!
Don’t forget the extra tax revenue garnered from smokers and drinkers
I usually agree with you but here you are wrong. Covid deaths will show you that ‘they’ – the fat smokers and unfit people – do not die younger until a pandemic comes along. So they are using up the resources of an NHS which was never designed to combat self-inflicted illnesses.
Do we accept that a system like the NHS is simple, let alone effective or efficient? I don’t. The problem is the NHS is now a cult, a religion, and must not be questioned. Yet it has one of the worst outcomes record of any health system in any advanced democracy.
My father died was a heavy smoker and he died of lung cancer when he was 54 years old. A few weeks before he died he said, “I enjoy smoking. We’re only on this Earth once so we might as well enjoy ourselves.”
I hear fat people say this all the time when they try to justify having another meal out with friends. The word ‘enjoyment’ has become synonymous with ‘socialising’ which itself has come to mean partying, going out for a drink, having a meal with the family. We have become boring – enjoyment only means food and drink.
Governments can’t fight this – in my opinion, only families can create other forms of enjoyment. But they don’t, so children become fat and the problem gets worse. When I go out with my wife we point out to each other extremely fat people. We say to each other, “How can people be so lacking in dignity that they can go out like that?” But if it concerns one of my wife’s family or friends, we are not allowed to say anything because it would be ‘unkind’. Families make the problem worse by not talking about it.
My dad was exactly the same. Paid his taxes and enjoyed smoking although he made it to 75. I never knew him to trouble the doctor until the problems started that turned out to be lung cancer and he was gone in 3 months.
It’s refreshing to hear someone who gets the real message behind my facetious comments. I despair at the people who don’t consider themselves unhealthy yet they’re always picking up every little cough and cold and they’re always taking a pill for something. None of them seem to correlate that to the quality or amount of what they stick down their necks and because the average person is so overweight in this country none of them considers themselves as obese as they actually are. But worse than all that. it never dawns on any of them that the only reason Coronavirus will cause them a problem is because they’re indulgent and lazy lifestyle makes them vulnerable. And I’m the problem because I don’t want to take chances with a vaccine I don’t need? You couldn’t make this stuff up!
One point which is worth making is that the population at large is not likely to catch obesity from the obese, but we are likely to catch covid from the irresponsible and stupid.
Good point but being Job’s advocate – u could also make a case that obesity might have an infective cause – given its clustering or that eating lettuce is instrumental -have u met an obese person who hasn’t tried stuffing themselves with lettuce?
Another point worth making is that the population at large (I see what you did there) are more likely to catch COVID from the fatties because the fatties are more likely to have it.
And what does irresponsible and stupid look like to you Fred?
Looking at the fact that you’re at -2 after my upvote I despair of the people reading these comments. They seem to have absolutely no sense of humor!
May come from being totally responsible, not overeating or smoking and generally refusing to enjoy themselves.
I have to admit that I, too, missed the humour in Fred’s comment. Was it the bit where he called those who don’t share his opinions irresponsible and stupid?
I would say it is irresponsible and stupid to smoke, drink, eat to excess.
The point was about choice. fat people choose to eat things that make them fat, this puts an extra burden on the health service, the vulnerable have been vaxxed, covid does not effect the vast majority, if you’ve had your vax then it shouldn’t bother you when other people haven’t, the unvaxxed won’t be a burden on the health service.
What peculiar logic! Whether people have or not been vaccinated is not what makes them a burden on the health service – it’s catching Covid (and reacting badly to it) which does.
”it’s catching Covid (and reacting badly to it) which does.” It’s highly unlikely you’ll catch it, and in the highly unlikely event you do catch it, you’ll either A, not even know you have it, B, suffer mild to moderate symptoms. Covid has an IFR of 0.23 percent, the average age of a covid death is 82.4, it has killed 0.04 percent of the global population.
Given the low risks to the vast majority, it is highly illogical to vaccinate the entire population with vaccines we don’t know the long term side effects of.
The vaccines give you 97 percent protection from a virus that isn’t the black death in the first place, if you don’t have faith in them then it’s illogical to have one.
You missed out one outcome. It’s not either A or B, it’s A, B or C where C is catch covid and get serious symptoms which might kill you. C might be a very unlikely outcome, but it is still
a possibility, and it is very, very nasty.
The thing is, Fred, your being jabbed won’t prevent you from catching covid, or from transmitting it. The jab is meant to stop it from killing you, should you be in the unfortunate minority for whom it would be fatal.
You really should get out more – while the government still allows it.
Unfortunately, Matt, they have made it up. And made the majority of the public believe it. I’m still seeing folk masked up with nobody within 50 metres of them when I’m out walking in the countryside. Operation Fear has been a resounding success.
I agree with that whole paragraph, except the two words indulgent and lazy. Because we know that what passes for those is often camouflage for mental health problems, and as you know, mental health problems can’t generally be “fixed”. The psychiaric pull pushers like to tell people they can pill people to health, but they can’t, psychiatric pills are no better than placebo. Obesity, and mental health problems, need to be prevented in youth.
But our entire health care system is geared to births of fragile new humans, and life extension of humans, whereas our policies SHOULD be directed at quality of life for youth and adults. But that’s the real not PC part right?
It’s a very interesting philosophical discussion and, for the record, I do fall into my own category of indulgent and lazy on a weekly basis (had 3 pints in the pub last night). My argument is entirely about taking responsibility for ourselves, we all have legitimate excuses but they don’t absolve us of responsibility for ourselves and to society.
I so agree with your comment.
My husband and I also point out the extreme fat people to each other. They are literally waddling like penguins . This is abuse towards oneself . If you were caring for a young person who you allowed to get like that, you would be vilified and taken to court for abuse. Or even if you were cutting yourself, you would be remanded for self abuse. But over/poor eating is seen as just a disease, to be cured with pills and operation and talk therapy. Really ? Bring in the nanny.
Junk food is profitable. So are pills and operations for obesity. Bring in the money.
yes, blame the parent, the “health” system, which is really a for-profit pill pushing system, cuz health does not generate profits… but don’t blame the victims, there are tons of reasons why people become obese, most of those mental health problems.
There is a strong theory with a growing body of evidence that causation is precisely the other way around i.e. poor diet causes mental health issues. Agreed, it then becomes a vicious circle that the marketing people of big pharma and and big food take ruthless advantage of.
How wonderfully sanctimonious of you. I may support an argument that if you abuse your body you should pay for treatment not expect everyone else to but not one that says “stop enjoying yourself, its wrong and its costing me money”
Only if waddling around and suffering the health effects of being very overweight is ‘enjoying yourself’.
As a fat person, though I don’t know if quite so fat as those you gleefully point out, I must point out to you that a lot of fatness in society is not due to voluntary gluttony. A few unrelated causes of obesity are mother stress during pregnancy, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), and mental health problems that prevent having normal behavioural controls over ones life.
Shaming fat people has not worked. But the “fat acceptance” movement has lead to even more obesity in society.
If our healthcare systems and more generally, our government policies, were doing a good job, we would reduce obesity rates through good policy. Why is junk food cheaper than quality food? why is McDonalds cheaper than a real restaurant. The answer lies in POLICY. Our governments subsidise grain consumption, like the corn oil used at McDonalds, where “corn” is the top molecular ingredient in its entire menu! McDonalds is basically being subsidised by tax payers through corn subsidies.
We need to be financing HEALTH programs, instead of financing pharmaceutical and geriatric research. We humans menopause at 50, that’s a good indicator of our actual lifespan, rather than our government subsidised “life expectancy”.
I would LOVE to not be so fat. But as you know, fat cells do not die. Once a fat cell is created, it’s there for life, demanding to be fed. If we are to change obesity rates, lambasting adults is pointless, it’s too late. The health policies that will prevent obesity are needed during gestation and childhood and youth.
You love creating panic out of nothing. “Scientific correspondant” hahahaha what a joke.
If the coronavirus bore the lethality of ebola as well as the infectiousness of measles, then the case for one to get vaccinated (*) would certainly be strong. But, if you’re healthy, then there really isn’t much value to you or to society to you getting an mRNA treatment. If you’ve already been infected, then you’ve been naturally vaccinated, so, again, one can demur.
If you’re old and infirm, then maybe getting vaccinated can make sense. You may not have long on this earth anyway, but if the vaccine gives you a year or two, it gives you a few years. Make good use of them. But — sorry to break the news — we’re all gonna die eventually.
(*) Stop calling them most of these treatments “vaccines”. Most of them are mRNA therapies. People have been working on mRNA technologies for some time; that’s why they could take them off the shelf and apply them to the coronavirus, but the technology is not mature. Indeed, everyone who gets the two jabs is participating in a trial.
Most of them are mRNA therapies? Pfizer’s and Moderna’s are. I don’t think that’s most in terms of types or amounts of vaccine.
Good old Tom, pushing exactly the same hysterical and verifiably false logic that he first plagiarised off some other zero-covidiot back in early 2020.
Tom, looking forward to your updates from the front line in Florida, Texas, Sweden – in fact everywhere that disproves your shrill, absurd, junk science.
PS probably time to stop quoting your modelling buddies and their always grossly wrong predictions, you really should be embarrassed to push this garbage
The argument about unvaccinated people taking up precious hospital capacity due to their selfish choices could be extended to many of those others that use the hospital. Many diseases are preventable with good lifestyle choices. In particular we know very well about the health risks associated with being overweight or obese. Indeed there would clearly have been much less pressure on the NHS from Covid had we not so many people in bad health due to bad lifestyle choices. Should we turn away every fat heart attack victim from A&E because there could be a virtuous cycling crash victim in waiting? Should we perhaps also check whether that heart attack victim did something very important for society and whether that cyclist was perhaps a drug dealer who would be better left to last? We live in a society where we accept people have the choice to make good or bad decisions in their lives, because we know the lines are too blurred to legislate and because we all know we sometimes make bad decisions ourselves. Indeed, what is a bad decision for one person may be a good one for another. So we just do the best we can in the imperfect world we live in, and give people as much access to information on which to base their decisions as possible. That this principle is now being questioned, and only for something where you must have something foreign that you might not understand put into your body, rather than the choices you make for yourself in your everyday life is extremely sinister.
Indeed, some numbers would be nice:
First: “More than 2,000 cases of the new “Indian” variant have been detected, nearly 500 of them in Bolton and Blackburn…”
“But he made one interesting point: the majority of people in Bolton and Blackburn who are in hospital with the new variant are of an age who are eligible to have the vaccine, but who have chosen not to.”
So, 500 cases; how many hospitalised? We can assume the same rate as the previous variants but to get whole people let’s say as much as 1%; 5 people. So the majority, 3 out of 5 people, not vaccinated?…ho-hum. Or am I being too cynical?
There are 4 in hospital in that whole area, including Blackburn, as well as Burnley. The largest hospital is Royal Blackburn. There may therefore only be one in Burnley hospital, there’s a maximum of four. Which means that the whole ‘scare’ is nothing but smoke and mirrors, lies and deception.
So you’re not being too cynical, but almost spot on.
I think it’s the trend, or possible trend, that some find worrying. Not the numbers today, but the numbers in a couple of months’ time.
So we’re being shut down again, or threatened with it, even though numbers are dropping like a stone right now, because they ‘might’ go up again.
If this is serious, then we’re never going to unlock, because numbers ‘might’ always be about to go up again, from this or some other member of the coronavirus family.
In a couple of months’ time, around 80% of the population will have been vaccinated, so – if the vaccines are effective, where’s the worry?
Just too accurate. Thanks for the exercise,
“Urdu-speaking health professionals don’t grow on trees…” Yup, multi-cultural chickens are coming home to roost.
We are a multi-ethnic society now, and (in my humble opinion) that makes us a more vibrant and interesting people. But the idea, that people were welcome to live in their own little cultural and linguistic enclaves, was something that was pushed on us by the left-leaning academics. It was only discarded a decade ago (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994), but its consequences live on.
According to The News (Pakistan), ‘Hundreds of Pakistani doctors affected by COVID-19 in UK’, April 1, 2020:
“Around 13,000 Pakistani doctors work in the UK.” I’d imagine many of them speak Urdu.
The witch-hunt has started.
I have never taken part in experimental testing of rushed through drugs whose makers make no claim that the jab prevents infection or reoccurrence. The public have lost their marbles through fear. End of.
My brother use to participate in final testing stages of drugs, but he was handsomely paid for it!
Vaccinate those with pre existing conditions and the elderly, that will reduce deaths by 95% plus. No one else needs to have it.
Medically not, you are correct.
But this always was, is and will remain about something completely different than peoples health, to the contrary:
Each NPI, restriction and now the gene therapies have had and will have only one effect over time: reducing the average life expectancy of the plebs.
Guess why.
It is a poor article based on minimal fact and pseudo main stream thinking. No value to man nor best.
Unfortunately unherd has taken a nosedive, since hiring this Big Pharma lackey that keep pushing vaccine agenda, as their science editor.
There Is nothing scientific, neither alternative views in his articles, just gross propaganda
This article never demonstrates how localized outbreaks affects everyone. That’s just an assertion. Furthermore, it assumes that those who choose not to get vaccinated are so ignorant that they’re unaware of potentially getting sick from new variants. And it also assumes that this new highly transmissible variant is dangerous to them.
Tom Chivers writes like a shill for the vaccine companies. According to independent (of the vaccine companies) scientist Dr Mike Yeadon, who has proven expertise in these matters, not one aspect of the government’s policy on covid is backed by the scientific evidence. See his article in yesterday’s technocracy.news. I’m not putting the link for fear of censorship.
Yeadon has no vaccine expertise (he was an allergy expert). He has descended from making wrong assertions about PCR and claiming there’d be no second wave to outright crankery about a conspiracy to depopulate the world. His former colleagues no longer recognise him. Reuter has a good overview at “The ex-Pfizer scientist who became an anti-vax hero.” https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-coronavirus-vaccines-skeptic/
“Michael Yeadon, wasn’t just any scientist. The 60-year-old is a former vice president of Pfizer, where he spent 16 years as an allergy and respiratory researcher. He later co-founded a biotech firm that the Swiss drugmaker Novartis purchased for at least $325 million.”
As the article says, he was clearly in favour of vaccines at the beginning of the pandemic, which makes it all the more strange that he’s now apparently gone off his rocker. That and the racist rants whose discovery caused him to delete his Twitter account do make me wonder whether there’s more going on there than we know.
At least half of this article’s premise is predicated on the idea that being vaccinated “will [make it] increasingly hard for the virus to spread”, while there is no real world data to suggest such.
I am a white, healthy man in my 30s. To even consider taking a vaccine with no consideration of the long-term effects just to mitigate the <1% risk of serious illness, is, to me, bonkers. That’s before even touching the fact that the UK is one of a small group of countries willing to trust the AZ vaccine any more, but that’s delving too deep into the murky politicking of Pfizer.
I simply find a large portion of the arguments in favour of getting the vaccine are either based on half-truths or simply in the hopes it will get the media and government to finally shut up about the whole situation and “return to normal”. Neither convince me.
Oh and I would have thought Chivers would remember that comparing those you’re trying to convince to “cranks” did one side no favours in Brexit or the UK/US 2016 elections. If one side is convinced the other are fanatics it does little but entrench the others’ views.
I think this is a really interesting point made even more powerful for people younger than yourself – for example my university-age daughters who are extremely unlikely ever to be badly impacted if they catch covid-19. But that’s almost always the case with vaccination – on the basis of purely personal considerations there is almost always a net personal cost. If I personally skip the MMR vaccine I avoid any long-term effects while benefiting from the fact that measles, mumps and rubella are not circulating because everyone else took the vaccine. I am better-off not getting vaccinated. Covid-19 is actually one of those rare instances where taking a vaccine is in the personal interests of most people being offered it. For you, accepting vaccination is an act of altruism, a gift by you to the old (and others vulnerable to covid-19) whose vaccine failed to confer immunity, or who never got vaccinated. How large a gift it is depends on the degree to which vaccination reduces transmission, as you point out, so its value is currently uncertain.
But the MMR vaccine has proven efficiency in virtually eradicating those infectious diseases, and no deleterious effects on those who take it. Neither of these claims can be made for the COVID vaccines.
generalities in this instance, although they may be interesting, are not really relevant.
There are a few problems with this article.
It is strange in such a long article that these were not mentioned. It’s almost as if it was written to push an agenda, rather than being a reasoned discussion. Which is fine, but then it should be made clear, probably (ie. propaganda piece).
I am hoping on this site we will not be getting same mainstream narrative on vaccines
two points
it is to everyone’s advantage to have a minority unvaccinated in event problems emerge with vaccines down the road
second we are not aiming to eliminate risks of covid anymore than any other disease ( eg cancer, heart disease ) just educate people on risks
more intellectual questioning appreciated!!
It’s very simple. If they fully opened up and returned to life pre 2020 even the most fearful would see nothing bad happen, as happened in Texas, Florida. If they don’t get us all jabbed they can’t introduce the vax / freedom passes, (digital ID) that have been outlawed in some US States.
Here we go who would have predicted this…oh hang I did months ago. The unvaccinated being blamed for not lifting restrictions. Disgusting.
What happened to the pre covid 80% vaccinated achieves herd immunity belief? Now its 100%? So what about all those that cannot be vaccinated are they now the unclean and dangerous. What’s next a big yellow star to warn people away from us.
All of this does not make sense if its about a virus that only kills the over 80’s who have co-morbidities. The intensity of the need to vaccinate everyone smacks of desperation. What are they so desperate to achieve? Time is certainly a factor you can tell from the urgency of pushing this. As many people as possible which is why herd immunity is being ignored.
Call me suspicious but the time factor suggests there is an “issue” that will unfold eventually. The autumn when the vaccinated drop like flies? More social interaction and people find out that there are many unvaccinated and why they choose to. God help us if its the former and the various studies around the world prove to be correct. Nightmare
Why the need for near 100%? If you were very suspicious you would suggest : xxxxxxxxx ( for too conspiratorial, however these days conspiracies rapidly turn to facts !)
If this hysteria continues, babies will be vaccinated as they leave the womb.
Or even before!
The goalposts keep moving. I hope there are extra wheels to make the job easier.
Imagine if the arrogant elite were able to say “we’re not sure” when that would be accurate. Instead, we get rules and mandates delivered with unwavering confidence, later replaced by new rules with the same degree of confidence.
My mother was taken ill last week and an ambulance came to take her to the Great Western Hospital near Swindon. There was not one single bed and she was transferred to Bath. There are five patients in hospital with Sars CoV2 and two admitted during this period. The capacity constraint had nothing to do with the Virus.
My daughter works in Bolton as a teacher and has no absenteeism to speak of in her secondary school but in the Southern Boroughs where the surge is there is no movement in the 60+ infections and most of the additional cases are 10-19 years who of course at worse will feel poorly but most will be asymptomatic. A few hundred children being a cluster is not an issue, causes no hospital capacity constraints and requires no policy intervention just some monitoring by local agencies to get the kids to stay in. Last year my daughters pupils were very compliant when they got the virus they wanted to get back to their studies.
This is the problem with project fear it runs on empty.
My daughter is also a teacher and this sounds very similar to her experience.
Surely any dissent on taking an experimental vaccine is based on simple observations like – Why take an experimental vaccine for a disease where the symptoms are so mild most have to be tested to know they have got it! – Those that have the comfort of knowing they were infected will know they have already had the best possible vaccination as this is acknowledged as the best possible type of vaccination for all other diseases and is a huge bonus to the community regarding Covid that is denied by the authorities – As a background for further scepticism is the observation that outcomes are so the same in different regimes regardless of the severity of Lockdown and Mask enforcement so it is clear we pretend we know all when we know so little – Also the overall position that we are in total panic about a pandemic where total deaths are near average – And the average age of death from this disease is 83 while 81 for all other causes – And symptoms are so mild most have to be tested to know they are ill! – And not forgetting that this experimental vaccine is only supplied on condition that those supplying it are immune from any responsibility – And because it is now admitted internationally that Covid deaths were exaggerated by vast percentages (one admitted at 90%) you have to assume the same is being done in reverse for vaccination complications – And long term effects are obviously unknown – And it is interesting to note that treatments alternative to vaccination like several long established and cheap drugs are suppressed because an experimental (and profitable) vaccine can only be authorised if there is no other way!
How many people under 60 , without co morbitities, have died of Covid, in the UK? It’s less than 500, isn’t it? How many of you know someone in this category? This virus has a 99.7% recovery rate. So high, that it’s statistically impossibly to measure whether the jab makes any difference. Btw, it’s not a vaccine, but an untested, emergency licensed gene therapy, which has caused devastating enhanced immunity & death, in poor lab animals. My asst vicar had the AZ jab over 4 months ago. The night of jab, she felt ill. Next day she was in A&E with Giant Cell Arteritis – a severe autoimmune reaction, which an cause rapid, permanent blindness. On high dose steroids, she has been very sick since then. Already had second flare up. She is vehemently pro vax, but in no doubt that it caused it. She won’t tell rest of congregation the truth, in case it puts them off having it. I had Covid last year and was pretty ill. It left me with asthma issues, which are resolving. But I’ve lived with post viral issues all my life. And flu can kill. The flu I had in Feb 2018 was FAR worse. Statistically young people are more likely to die from flu than Covid. The world has been driven insane with fear, by those with their own agenda. Look past the MSM. Unherd, I’m disappointed in you.
An excellent post.
Every upper respiratory tract infection I have ever had has left me with issues afterwards. It is quite normal I thought. Covid ones could be worse but not necessarily. I have had pleurisy , pneumonia a few times and am still here. Long covid is just another name for the nasty things that we fall prey to after a serious infection.
A 56 year old man (men twice as likely to die as women, but nobody cares about that unless they are BAME) who worked for me and had no co-morbidities died in the first wave. You ought to look at the hospitalisation figures and in particular the ICU figures (first peak on Apr 11th ie about 3 weeks after first lockdown, 3330 people were in ICU with COVID, 2nd peak on Jan 22nd ie just over 2 weeks from 2nd full lockdown 4080 people were in ICU with COVID – currently it is 124), – the majority of them were under 60. The collapse of the health service, which has been narrowly avoided twice, would have had far reaching consequences for all ages. Indeed there are many health time bombs potentially ticking away already because treatments for other diseases have not be given, because there were so many COVID patients to treat. Vaccines don’t stop infections and don’t completely stop transmissions but they do reduce it. The marked effect is in reductions in hospitalisations and in particular ICUs (France still has about 5000 people in ICU with COVID down from a peak of nearly 6000).
We are not going to eradicate this virus, which is going to continue to mutate into new variants. We need to live as normal lives as possible despite it (I won’t miss aspects of old normal like being crammed in like sardines and rudely jostled by people who want to get a few seconds ahead). The answer is vaccines as natural herd immunity comes at too high a price and has to be curtailed by lockdowns to prevent hospital overload. All my family, including my children because they work in the health service have had both shots and if there is a new shot required for the vulnerable in the autumn I will get it if I am eligible.
It is also of note that whilst excess deaths in hospitals and care homes have been negative for weeks now, they are still significantly positive for ordinary homes. Why? are people afraid to go to hospital still or do they still think they should not be a burden because hospitals are still overloaded? Last week the number of new hospitalisations due to COVID was 3 per million – the lowest figure since the pandemic began (peak 1 on Apr 5 2020 ie 2 weeks after first lock down was 319 per million and Peak 2 on Jan 10 ie 1 week after 2nd full lock down was 424 per million).
What a load of tosh. Not even worth critiquing. The only crankish vaccine sceptic he manages to mention is Piers Corbyn while ignoring people like Dr Mike Yeadon, ex Pfizer and Dr. Janci Chunn Lindsay and so many, many more. Where does he get the idea that unvaccinated people are at fault for vaccinated people becoming infected!? Does he not realise that these vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission.
He should consider becoming a politician or even better, a member of SAGE.
The article is trash, but so is your comment. Some vaxxes (and maybe Pfizer’s) confer “sterilizing immunity,” meaning that a vaxxed person can’t pass it on. Do some research, for a change.
This article is unscientific nonsense. Shame on you Unherd for joining the herd and spouting government fear propaganda.
Where’s the real critical analysis around this vaccine drive? Nowhere to be seen.
Faster and faster we’re being herded into a fascist, totalitarian state, an Orwellian dystopia.
OMG enough with the fear mongering!
They Guy in the Photo – he is wearing a Pathan hat. (Western pakastan, Afghanistan) So is he illustrating the “but people of Pakistani origin had just 78%, (uptake) “, or is he a Generic India Picture by Getty?
I will reply in Generic Guardian.
How do you know he does not have British citizenship? He is as British as you or me. etc. etc.
He’s Rochdale born & bred.
Don’t ever leave this site, Sanford.
“And while it’s tempting to say that if people aren’t getting vaccinated, it’s their own fault and their own problem, it’s not entirely true.” – and then come the excuses.
Please spare us the white man’s burden, just his once. If minorities are choosing not to get the vaccine, that is on them and them alone. There is no way to live in this country and avoid the ceaseless propaganda. These are not victims of anything.
We have had a year and a quarter of this. Covid deaths are now below traffic accident numbers, the vast majority of at-risk people are vaccinated, including me and I want my freedoms back. I am not prepared to spend one extra day in a mask because some people in Bolton have low IQs. I support their right to choose and they must accept the consequences of their choice.
Are Tom Chivers and Dan Hodges the same person?
And there I thought that “Unherd” was a publication that encouraged and supported free and independent thought…. so now you publish the opinions of an ill informed and clearly unresearched writer. who is very definitely doing nothing but trying to Herd people down the popular fear driven narrative of the Covid scam. While not all vaccines are necessarily bad there are very compelling reasons to have serious doubts about the Covid “hash” that has been rushed to the publicand right now absolutely no one has real and truthful statistical data to prove that wrong!
When I first saw the headline in my inbox, I thought it was a NYT article, and was shocked to realize it was by UnHerd instead. That’s all I have to say about this.
The author says that: “…some vaccinated people will still die as a result of other people’s refusal to take the vaccine. “ This statement is obviously false, contradictory and dangerous. Why is the blame put on unvaccinated people and not the product? If the product does its job, then no one should be worried if the next guy is vaccinated or not.
Why has the journalist not mentioned that highly effective and inexpensive treatments are being banned and costly vaccines that are actually not terribly effective are being favoured?
Stats in Israel and France show that many vaccinated people are testing positive but tend to be asymptomatic thus being more dangerous to the population at large.
Why are journalists perpetuating the myth that the problem lies in the unvaccinated? And contributing to discrimination when it looks through the lens of ethnicity?
Furthermore, many people are “hesitant” to get the vaccine because they have been vaccine injured before. Why isn’t this talked about?
Ethical and true journalism should not be shunning a portion of the population, and perpetuating false, biased and unscientific notions. I’m disappointed that such an opinion is presented in Unherd. You’ve lost my vote of confidence.
The same group don’t get their children vaccinated either , so certain areas have outbreaks of measles etc , I have never heard these parents being publicly called selfish even though other , unsuspecting adults, can get very ill from these childhood illnesses.Its also interesting that now its unvaccinated people who are responsible for people not getting treatment for their cancer and other ailments, not the medical profession. How does that work? Even if you catch covid ( from whom if most people are vaccinated?) you most likely won’t need hospital care & as theres no GPs you can’t phone them for a home visit.
This paper ( link below) is disturbing indeed .. It needs close examination and debate
It indicates suspicion of future vaccine-induced, heightened Covid19 disease and mortality in some reinfected vaccinees who have been given the current, oligovalent mRNA /DNA based vaccine constructs, perhaps due to ADE or induced hypersensitivity
If so, and given the recent VAERS reports of adverse effects and mortalities closely associated with the vaccines – as yet only EUA designated by the FDA and other agencies – especially in young and healthy subjects, there should be an immediate national debate and reassessment, in my view …
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351441506_Expert_evaluation_on_adverse_effects_of_the_Pfizer-COVID-19_vaccination
It seems to be claiming a documented 20-fold increase in vaccination-associated death rates, inversely correlated with age, with up to 60% increase in vaccination-associated mortality among 20-24s, extrapolated to over 100% increase for under 5s. (It won’t allow me to copy and paste, but that’s from the Overview.)
Those numbers just don’t seem to stack up.
It later goes on to say RNA from the vaccines will in some cases integrate into chromosomes. (In fact, the wording is “will in some cases integrate chromosomes”, but let’s assume that’s a mistake.) Will. Well, it’s a theoretical possibility, very faint as I understand it, and never yet observed, but this paper is unambiguously stating it will, even continuing with “Any claim to the contrary is misleading and misinformed.”
I don’t intend to read any further, as it seems it’s this paper that’s misleading and misinformed.
From the downloaded paper:
“Below I describe several potential negative vaccine effects, including vaccination-associated, documented 3- and 20-fold increases in infection and death rates, respectively. … Further analyses show for ages 20-90 that increases in vaccination-associated mortality are inversely proportional to age, up to 60 % for those aged 20-24. Extrapolating these results for ages below 20 expects mortality increases beyond 100 % for those younger than 5.”
and
“4. RNA from the vaccine will in some cases integrate chromosomes of the vaccinated, with potentially harmful consequences difficult to evaluate at this point. Any claim to the contrary is misleading and misinformed. Human chromosomes integrated genomes of retroviruses that include RNA->DNA reverse transcriptase genes.” [SARS-CoV-2 does not include such a gene.]
You can send it to yourself in a text or email. That wasn’t a problem.
I’ll give it a go.
Thank you for the link. I have managed to understand the main gist, although I am not medically educated. The findings are disturbing, particularly with regard to children, and I cannot understand why governments are ignoring it.
This government are acting like gangsters holding the population hostage, with the message being: get vaccinated and get your lives back. They will seemingly employ any means necessary to divide people, encourage blame and highlight particular groups as a means to achieving the end goal: a passport/ID system of control of everybody.
That so many people are falling over themselves to play their game and usher in bio-fash is extremely depressing.
I wonder if Tom Chivers anticipated that many, if not most, of the comments would appear to come from those whom he characterised as vaccine hesitant or sceptic.
I find it frightening how easily people have accepted this experimental treatment before it has gone through proper clinical trials including safety testing (especially longterm), toxicology -especially reproductive, genotoxicity, potential oncology effects and GMP.
Effectiveness has been stated as relative risk ratios which tend to exaggerate responses instead of absolute risk ratios which must be used as the ABPI Code states. The only effect confirmed by the trials is a reduction in severity of symptoms.
The MHRA Yellow card system of ADRs shows nearly 1200 fatalities linked to these vaccines. VAERs in US are showing about 30 fatalities a day since records began 5 months ago. The EUDRA shows there have been 10,500 fatalities. These agencies who are supposed to report these findings but seem to be in denial state that <10% ADRs are reported.
There have been more reports on C-19 vaccines on VAERs than have ever been seen in the 21 years of its existence. Many like Pandemrix were withdrawn after 63 reports of narcolepsy.
Reports are emerging that hospitalisations are increasing from the vaccinated.
Perhaps this is why the thinking person is not getting the shot?
What garbage. The author knows nothing about vaccines in general, let alone these.
I am one of the many COVID vaccine skeptics who believe tried and true and tested vaccines have a place for known deadly diseases with high fatality rates where there are no alternative treatments. I can read and write and have two university degrees, including one in postgraduate research. I’m not a moron or bogan or imbecile or denier or refusenik. What am I? Does anyone have a respectful catchphrase for folks like me? Folks who believe we should be free from the type of coercion, shaming, bullying, younameit we get from the likes of Mr. Chivers, who writes like a holier than thou minion of Big Pharma and the Holy Narrative creators. Freedom over the illusion of safety every day for this unenlightened one. What, pray tell, is my name?
Lol. What a joke of an article. Tom on the Bill Gates gravy train?
That’s about the size of it. Still, think about how enriched our culture is. We can get spicy food now.
“People don’t usually choose the communities they grow up in, and if you live in one where lots of people don’t trust the British establishment for whatever reason, I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s your own fault.”
Why not? If these people believe Leftist clap-trap (and oddly enough with anti-vax the Right too) it’s certainly their own fault. There is no excuse for ignorance
Nothing like a bit of fake science based xenophobia.
There is a moral issue for some that makes taking the vaccine impossible, the use of abortion-derived cell lines in the design and production or confirmatory testing.
I think what’s needed is a vaccination to protect people from the educated middle class. They spend years systematically trashing everything about their country, relentlessly hammering into the heads of ethnic minorities that everything is institutionally racist against them, then they turn on people who don’t trust the state. You really couldn’t make this stuff up.
“educated middle class” – Isn’t that the Unherd commentariat summed up in a nutshell?
Whatever else it is, it’s an oxymoron.
Bachelors degree in law, heavy vehicle driver by occupation. Make of that what you will.
More shameless drug pushing propaganda on here.
From WHO website: official stats contradicting their own propaganda:
“For people younger than 70 years, infection fatality rate of COVID-19 across 40 locations with available data ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% (median 0.05%) ”
(Can’t post links on here but ‘search’ on that para and it will take you straight to the source.)
Why would anyone in his right mind submit to a vaccine for what would otherwise be called a cold, whose average mortaility at 82 years 4 months exceeds the average lifespan? Same as every other year when respiratory viral infections routinely see off those already at death’s door.
There are any number of eminent scientific/medical professionals reporting the truth about “Covid” as well as the experimental gene editing”vaccine”, e.g. Dr Wolfgang Wodarg who thwarted the previous 2009 plandemic. Prof Sucharit Bhakdi, Prof Dolores Cahill, and Dr Mike Yeadon formerly of Pfizer, to name a few who have been ‘cancelled’ by media cartels.
Their depositions to corporate fraud lawyer Reiner Fuellmich’s Berlin based Corona Investigative Committee are required reading / viewing for those taken in by media / officialdom propaganda of which this site is possibly the most egregious instance with its bogus branding.
Not a single piece on here dissenting from the globalist orthodoxy either on Covid or ethnic cleansing of Europeans, which for Britons is already mathematically guaranteed, by birth rates alone, even without further influx: British births set to be a minority of births by 2030; British school children an ethnic minority in British schools come 2035. And that’s *without* further immigration.
What’s happening in England meets the UN definition of genocide; Reiner Fuellmich’s term for Covid which he also calls “organised crime”. Unheard would be more like it. .
The issues in Bolton etc. remind me very much of an apparently “sudden and threatening Covid-19 outbreak” in northern Greater Manchester at the back end of 2020. As now, we were assailed with stories about the local health service facilities being threatened by exponential increases in the number of infected patients etc. IIRC, a journalist working for the Manchester Evening News wanted to get some reliable data on this, but found that this wasn’t available, so he phoned round the local hospital trusts, only to be told the information he required could only be accessed via the NHS centrally, and they weren’t releasing it. Now, in May 2021, we’re being told about a similar outbreak in Bolton, but (and I’m sure it’s just a coincidence) the government’s website (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nhstrust&areaName=Lancashire%20&%20South%20Cumbria%20NHS%20Foundation%20TrustNHS) seems to have a problem. Is it really so difficult to keep us informed about the number of Covid-related hospital admissions in Bolton or are we left to assume that the story is being manipulated by the government for its own ends?
Ok, so there are a few small instances where vaccine refusal by one person becomes somebody else’s problem, but these are a very small number of likely occurrences which I am sure the country’s health system can easily cope with going forward.
If people refuse the vaccine, that’s their right. But they don’t have the right to ruin the lives of others by keeping sections of society indefinitely closed down. They have assessed their risk of vaccine -v- covid and can now take their chances in a fully open society.
Valid point but I can never read it without recalling the brilliant “let ’em crash” gag in Airplane. They don’t make them like they used to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn0WdJx-Wkw
Nobody is keeping society closed except the government. Vast numbers are vaccinated but then they find another “variant “ obligingly more “transmissible “.
There wouldn’t have been this surge in India if they hadn’t allowed themselves to start vaccinating, especially after there history with Bill Gates polio vaccines, that gave many Indians Polio.
And stopping them to take Invermectin or Hydro C didn’t help either. Hope they didn’t get this advice of some British quack.
Carl, you took the words from my mouth. Enough of silly and ridiculous articles by the Tom Chivers of the world.
This article ignores the effects of naturally formed immunity, which according to studies, is better than vaccine immunity (which is, nevertheless, also very good).
The article also hobbles itself with the same fallacy that drove the lock-downs: “asymptomatic transmission”.
“Herd immunity” (now an acceptable term, once again) ends an epidemic because the virus runs out of susceptible hosts. But it runs out of susceptible hosts because non-susceptible hosts don’t spread it – because they are non-symptomatic.
So, as Mr. Chivers demonstrates, we have some way yet to go before sanity returns.
It’s a bit late in the day to start thinking. Perhaps the establishment now are reaping the harvest of losing the trust of certain ethic or other minority groups. Perhaps the vaccine companies should have thought about this before they abused their positions in the developed world.
You reap what you sow. People don’t fear the state at birth any more than they are racist at birth. People don’t come from the womb with a lack of trust in pharmaceutical companies. To blame all this on wrong headed nut jobs is disingenuous. There are rational reasons to fear the state. There are good reasons not to trust billionaires and scientists who live off their grants.
That doesn’t make it right. It does make it real.
‘Most Anti-Vaccine Conspiracies Online Come From The Same 12 People, Study Shows’
Science Alert 17 May 2021
Hair-tearing article. So much wrong with it I barely know where to start. Who has isolated and characterised the “Indian” variant? As this virus hasn’t yet been purified, how does anyone track a “variant”? The “vaccines” are still not tested for long-term safety, and so far the number and severity of adverse reactions is truly alarming.
Since there is a safe and effective alternative, which renders the emergency approval moot, why not employ that instead?
We knew Boris would find some excuse to keep the lockdowns going, and this would be it. The sky is falling! Help! Variants! The word “mutation” is a good one for more scaremongering.
How about the Boris variant? Ot the Hancock one? Or the Martian one?
How about just giving people Ivermectin according to the FLCCC protocol, and calling off the “pandemic” which is actually over, since the NHS declared covid a not unusually dangerous disease back over a year ago. I quote… As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK. Ivermectin and other antivirals care not for these minor variations. They just see a virus, never mind its ethnicity.
“Who has isolated and characterised the “Indian” variant?”
The people doing the sequencing of the virus, I expect. Try Nextstrain.
Ivermectin is an anti parasitic made by Merck, who say themselves that they know of no evidence it works against covid19. “Merck Statement on Ivermectin use During the COVID-19 Pandemic – Merck.com” https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/
In general, I’ve found Ivermectin advocacy to be a good indicator that the advocate believes a bunch of other made up or distorted stuff (such as the stuff about vaccines and the claim that the virus has not been isolated, from your own comment).
Plus, in a couple of decades, we’ll have all the numbers we need to demonstrate that the insane number of hypersensitivities today’s youth have is because they didn’t catch enough serious illnesses and had too many vaccinations, causing their immune system to react nonsensically to everything.
There is another reason. If you are not here legally you dont ask to get vaccinated . Because they ask for your details so they can record your vaccination.
https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/30161/vaccine-amnesty-in-uk-for-undocumented-migrants
But yes not all will know or trust this.
“One senior scientist I spoke to said that some of the things we can do are pretty obvious, like finding healthcare providers who can speak the predominant minority language in affected areas. They’re not necessarily easy — Urdu-speaking health professionals don’t grow on trees — but we ought to try.”
Is it not foolish to have allowed development of significant areas of the country, the inhabitants of which can’t speak English? How do they participate intelligently in things like elections?
According to The News (Pakistan), ‘Hundreds of Pakistani doctors affected by COVID-19 in UK’, April 1, 2020:
“Around 13,000 Pakistani doctors work in the UK.” I’d imagine many of them speak Urdu.
Right, a simple fact.
Hancock deceives. He was saying that all but one of the persons in Burnley hospital for COVID are persons who have been offered a vaccine and declined. So a reasonable journalist would ask how many are in hospital with COVID in East Lancashire (the region that covers Blackburn and Burnley)? They would then discover that there are only 4 persons (and the biggest hospital is the Royal Blackburn Hospital, so it is quite possible that there is only one person who has tested covid positive in Burnley Hospital anyway!).
Decent journalism wouldn’t spread government lies and deception.
“People don’t usually choose the communities they grow up in, and if you live in one where lots of people don’t trust the British establishment for whatever reason, I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s your own fault.”
That is astonishing line of argument. Our society is built on the premise that you are responsible for your own beliefs once you are an adult. Can you imagine that argument being used as follows?
“People don’t usually choose the communities they grow up in, and if you live in one where lots of people are BNP members, I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s your own fault if you become one too.”
Arguments about vaccine effectiveness (of which there are plenty being made here) are a different point altogether.
Any article relating to the covid produces more whackjobs than a convention of flat earthers.
A questioning nature, the application of logic and the ability to apply reason makes me a whackjob?
What’s “funny” is that this whole boondoggle has been riding on a number “flat earth” type fallacies:
And, the latest one:
I’m not. 😉
The new variant seems to be about 50% more transmissible even than the Kent variant
Assuming that those bringing the ‘variant’ in are coming from highly populated areas of India back to similar circumstances in Britain, How can you determine rates of transmission?
Whilst accepting there may be significant under reporting of deaths the death rate in India is 6 times less than ours. it would appear that their rates of infection have also peaked
This does not add up
There are a lot of comments here referring to obesity in the UK. From ‘Obesity-linked hospital admissions pass one million for first time’ in today’s Times:
In 2019-20 there were 1.02 million admissions for which obesity was either the primary or secondary cause, an increase of 17 per cent on the year before. Conditions are likely to have included heart, lung and kidney disease, which are all linked to being overweight.
The figure was 600 per cent higher than a decade earlier. In 2009-10 there were only 142,219 admissions recorded as linked to obesity.
Tom Chivers and a ‘senior scientist’ he quotes think that: “Urdu-speaking health professionals don’t grow on trees”.
I recommend that they and Government talk with Pharmacy organisations. Sadly, Pharmacists were ignored for some months for vaccinating all groups. A useful number of Pharmacists and Pharmacy Staff speak Urdu. NB Ethnic minority groups visit their local Pharmacies more often the GP.
the elephant in the room may well be that many refusing the jab may be here beyond their visas or just illegally. This is likely to be a younger group but it could well date back much further. If this is only partially true then some kind of amnesty is required.
The surge in India, which has given over 3 times as many vaccine doses as UK but having such a huge population this still only means just over 10% have had at lease one does and just under 3% have had 2, peaked in terms of case numbers in early May with deaths looking like they are peaking now. The peak in cases on a per capita basis is about 1/3 of the peak we had in UK in Jan and the peak in deaths is about 1/6th.
I really don’t get why there is a determination to make a big deal about COVID in India, which has numerous far greater killers, and indeed the Indian variant. Indeed Tom, who likes looking at data and debunking the nonsense that some decide to make of it, seems to have a blind spot when it comes to putting India and Indian Variant into context.
“a small percentage of a very large number is still a large number
Is it though? For example, if 30M people are vaccinated and vaccine is 94% effective against infection, it is not that 6% of 30M will get sick. It is 6% of those who get close enough exposure to the virus. If circulation of the virus is relatively low (and it is), it will be a small fraction of 30M.
But, OK, let’s say it will be 1/3 or 10M. This is quite generous. Then, 600K will catch the virus.
We know that majority of those will have a mild case.We are told that vaccines not only prevent infection, but also prevent severe disease in those that still get infected – in like nearly 100% of cases. If this is true, then the hospitalization rate and the death rate amongst those that get sick will go way down. I think hospitalization rate in people who got sick was no more than 10% even before the vaccination. Of course, it depends on the age and health, but we are talking about averages. So, may be 1% (6K) will require hospitalization. May be .1% (600) will die.
It is very sad when anyone dies, but, unfortunately, we are mortal. These are not particularly large numbers. Majority of these people will be already frail with average life expectancy of less than a year. And they are likely to need medical care for other reasons as well, so this factor would not create much of the extra stress on the health care system.
I am not wanting to argue over the exact effectiveness of vaccine. I am just using the numbers that are being reported by the health authorities.
Jobsworth standard article. Only worth a 3rd.
If …:….April, people of white British or Indian heritage had over 90% take up; but people of Pakistani origin had just 78%, and black African and black Caribbean groups were down at 71% and 67% respectively.’…then with these figures, taking into account those who have contracted covid and recovered (millions?)then herd immunity is already a reality.
Who isn’t getting vaccinated? Anyone brave and intelligent enough to do the research and know these vaccines and genetic treatments are highly experimental, a huge risk and totally unnecessary. And those who are not forced by their jobs to be jabbed even if they know they may lose their life or their health within the next couple of years.
Meanwhile, experts like Peter Doshi, senior editor for the British Medical Journal raise concerns and are ignored. While journalists for whatever reasons, push the vaccines and genetic treatments even though it is known they do not prevent infection and are poorly tested, rushed and high risk.
Quote: After rollout under emergency authorisation, manufacturers of covid-19 vaccines now have their sights on regulatory approval. But what’s the rush, asks Peter Doshi, and is just six months of data from now unblinded trials acceptable?
As hundreds of millions of people around the world get vaccinated, it may seem like wordsmithing to highlight the fact that none of the covid-19 vaccines in use are actually “approved.” Through an emergency access mechanism known as Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA), the products being rolled out still technically remain “investigational.”3 Factsheets distributed to vaccinees are clear: “There is no FDA approved vaccine to prevent covid-19.”4
The approval-authorisation distinction is often misunderstood by the media,5 even in the scientific press. But it was the focus of much discussion back in September 2020.
Covid-19 vaccines: In the rush for regulatory approval, do we need more data?BMJ 2021; 373 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1244 (Published 18 May 2021)Cite this as: BMJ 2021;373:n1244
But this is something which has been discussed many times. The real question is not whether you are right or wrong. It is what to do about it. Being right does not help.
Japan, where I lived for more than a decade, is a highly homogeneous country, but homogeneity comes with its own problems that include lack of imagination and bureaucratic stagnation. The double vaccination rate in the UK is currently 28%; in Japan it’s still around 1%.
But Japan doesn’t vaccinate children for MMR. Also, vaccination in South Korea has has stalled at 5%.
Japan is probably the only country that has released research linking general vaccinations with terminal allergies (which is an immune system condition) people have in the developed world (egg, peanut etc)
This is a fair point, but can you attribute lack of imagination and stagnation to lack of ethnic diversity? Countries need fresh ideas to progress, but from history it often seems like all you need to kick-start change is Commodore Perry coming to your country with gunboats in order to expose a need to progress. In my opinion, there’s no need for mass immigration to achieve the goals of breaking stagnation and infusing new ideas into the system.
When I joined Unherd, I was glad to become part of an open-minded community. Most of the posts below look more like British offshots of Qanon. Saaaad, as would have said who-you-know.
Jacques, it would do you good to be more open minded. Please look at HART, Leftlockdownsceptics and Global collateral for some balance to the governmenet line you are being fed. Even do something as simple as dial NHS111 and listen to their description of Covid 19. To paraphrase the message says that the majority of people that catch covid 19 will have mild disease that can be managed with over the counter medication. Does that sound like an infection that should lead to this global lockdown, economic ruin and forced vaccination programmes? Fwiw I have no sympathy with Q anon, 5G, NWO. I am a moderately intelligent self employed mother of 2 adult children who is used to applying common sense and rational thought to the majority of problems that come my way. Unfortunately, common sense seems to have left the globe in spring last year, and shows little sign of returning any time soon.
Tom ‘I love every vaccine/gene therapy’ Chivers is at it again.
Completely ignoring probability, the (non-existing) absolute risk reduction and the unknowable medium to long term side effects, and spreading entirely made up numbers and assessments on transmission risk, of these gene therapies.
If the in truth intelligent ‘refuseniks’, who, contrary to him, just seem to be aware of all this, wanted to or must get a proper vaccine to avoid the discrimination, they have no choice but to wait for the Valneva one and hope for a more proper research process for it, as the Sinopharm one is useless medically and also to avoid the discrimination.
That that is needed in the first place just demonstrates that Western mankind has now fallen to its lowest low since the end of WW2.
I read today in the DT that last year 1 million people were admitted to hospital as a result of obesity. The day before, I read that 660,000 had taken up smoking last year due to the pressures of lock down. I think we have greater reasons to fear for NHS capacity than the minority who have chosen not to take the jab.
You’re conflating chronic and acute problems, I’m sorry to say.
I will commit the cardinal sin of the Internet and proclaim mixed feelings. See, I’m a normal guy, not a purist. I am:
That said, I see NO public health risk here, except to those who don’t get the vax. Their choice, their consequences.
The expected mass of trenchant views expressed in response to an article by Chivers. It is amazing how many ‘armchair experts’ have managed to master within weeks all the biology, biochemistry, pharmacology, mathematics etc that infectious disease experts take years to acquire.
I suggest:
Always go to the original publication. Learn how to assess a medical publication – it is not easy. Dr Sebastian Rushworh’s blog has a useful summary of the scientific approach to evidence.
Do not cite a talking head on Youtube, Bitchute or whatever as evidence.
Especially avoid self-appointed ‘experts’ like Ivor Cummings etc.or one man and his dog saying, “I did X and it worked.”
Anecdotes are not evidence.
So you expect us to genuflect to the ‘peer-reviewed literature’, bought and paid for by industry?
Get real, people are waking up to ‘arguments from authority’…steeped in conflicts of interest.
Speaking of conflicts of interest, yet again Tom Chivers fails to disclose he is a participant in the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine trials.
Yes. Science may advance in fits and starts, have blind endings. revisions etc but it is better than any alternative. What do you suggest – voodoo, astrology, religion? Things do not become facts just because someone asserts them to be so.
Haven’t you heard ian k, ‘the science is settled’, no dissent allowed.
Heretics are not allowed to challenge holy writ, and people are being censored left, right and centre.
That’s some ‘science’ that refuses to be open to question…
No that is just plain wrong. There is plenty of discussion/dissent within the scientific community. Have you not read anything by Gupta, Heneghan and the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, the GBD authors, the Swedish epidemiologists. What distinguishes them from magicians, priests etc is a reliance on data.
Ask Gupta and Heneghan and others how easy it has been for them to express dissent…
And when it comes to the topic of questioning Covid vaccination, how many of the scientific and medical establishment will step up to the plate?
Personally, I’m fed up to the back teeth of this situation being dominated by often conflicted scientists and doctors. This situation affects us all, and we’re all entitled to question, and demand transparency and accountability… which often is not forthcoming…
Very easy. CEBM have an extensive website and publications, Gupta has interviews in prestigious magazines like Royal Society of Biology and has spoken of the Today pregramme, Heneghan and Gupta made a presentation to Johnson last year, they can publish in medical journals just as well as anyone else, the GBD authors all have readily available information.
You are constructing the wrong straw man to rail against. Anyone can find good quality scientific information with minimal effort. Transparency and accountability belong to politicians who make the decisions, not the science.
(1) Carl Heneghan on Twitter: “Here’s what happened when I posted our latest @spectator article to Facebook – I’m aware this is happening to others – what has happened to academic freedom and freedom of speech? There is nothing in this article that is ‘false’ https://t.co/8Kdmw38ICC” / Twitter: https://twitter.com/carlheneghan/status/1329861848573861888
The censorious war on lockdown sceptics | Brendan O’Neill, The Spectator
Britain at the start of 2021 doesn’t only have a Covid problem — it has a censorship problem, too. The germ of intolerance is spreading. Anyone who dissents, however slightly, from the Covid consensus will find him or herself branded a crank, even a killer. They will be hounded and demonised; online mobs will demand their expulsion from media platforms and from public life. I fear that this Salem-like hatred for sceptical voices will, like Covid itself, have a long-lasting and severely detrimental impact on this country.
Who he?
Does he speak ex-cathedra and therefore this proves your statements? If you can get paid to write this sort of hysteria. maybe I will give it a bash.
My opinion on this is that too often vaccine hesitant people are wrapped up in one convenient dismissible group – the anti vax, covid denying, micro chip and 5G theorists.
In reality many, like myself, are not against vaccines per se (I was vaccinated for all the usual things as were my 3 children), and can see from excess death figures that this disease has killed many thousands of susceptible people. Rather, we are hesitant because we have weighed up the risks and benefits of having this vaccine. If one is healthy, good BMI and metabolic health, the benefit from having the vaccine is very, very low as the chances of severe symptoms from covid is also very, very low. This is especially true if one has already had and recovered from covid.
The risk from the vaccine? All the trial data to date certainly shows risk of serious short term side effects is also very, very low. But bear in mind that no vaccine has had full approval yet. All only have temporary approval for emergency use and therefore there has not been the elapsed time for medium or long term side effects to show up.
There is also the chance of antibody dependent enhancement, where those previously infected with a virus can have serious illness from a vaccine.
So there are legitimate reasons for deciding to wait for the vaccine. There is no firm proof that unvaccinated people spread any more or less than vaccinated, especially if they have natural immunity antibodies and / or T cells from a previous infection. There is more than one way to have immunity and from what I have read, natural immunity is certainly no weaker or long lasting than from a vaccine.
Finally, and most importantly I think, we all must ensure that divisions in society aren’t allowed to grow in relation to vaccinated status. No ‘unclean’ bells needed!
Lot of very confused people on here. Many claiming vaccinations don’t work or worse. Thats a bit like one handed clapping.
The other side of the equation is covid. Covid definitely does work. If you are getting on in years its quite likely to do you a lot of harm.
So to the anti vaxxers – its your choice – your view of vaccines possibly hurting you ? or the much much higher risk that Covid definitely will hurt you ?
I like the logic of this article.
In the UK “we need to vaccinate many more people than we would have done to achieve herd immunity” due to the latest variant.
” quite soon there will come a point at which a vaccine dose will do more good for the UK if it’s in the arm of an Indian citizen than a British one”
Is this called having your cake and eating it?
Tim. These are all good points. But it’s also about opportunity. My professional middle class teacher daughter with little slack in her life would probably still be trying to get a slot for a vaccine were it not for the fact that her more flexible husband sat on the Internet intermittently for several hours until he found her one no more than 15 miles away on a Saturday. For some people that’s a bit of a luxury, so it gets delayed and delayed…
Hancock is good with propaganda. He is saying that only people who have not had the vaccine are suffering from the Indian variant (and I assume this applies to all variants) and that nobody else has the virus. Where is the evidence? If we are free to make our own choices, why is he worried if only the non-vaccinated are suffering?
We do not have any other vaccine forced on us and are free to make our own choice. Some might claim that the smallpox vaccine allowed it to be eliminated, but that is not true. Smallpox has entirely different characteristics and it was really the huge effort to identify cases and isolate them that eliminated smallpox.
If you’ve been vaccinated you’re protected, if you haven’t yet – but will – you’re probably young and fit enough to fight it off but are joining in with the spirit of the programme. If you are eligible for a vaccine but refuse to take one then the risk is ALL ON YOU. You are exposing yourself to the risk that you will catch it, and die from it. So as far as I am concerned what’s the problem? People who have been vaccinated ARE NOT DYING. Those who are dying who chose not to get vaccinated I have zero sympathy for, they made that choice.
Wakey, wakey. Nobody is dying, vaccinated or not. It’s just the latest sham.
Um yes they are but we reached herd immunity a while ago *thanks to the vaccination programme*, the only people dying now are the old and *unvaccinated* and as that was likely to have been a choice I struggle to have much sympathy. As far as I am concerned if you are vaccinated you are protected, if you’re not (by choice) it’s your risk to take so go fill your boots. We should lift lockdown NOW frankly, it is taking the michael to go into panic mode over a few antivaxxers who have made a choice (I don’t have any problem with that choice either).
But the risk is infinitesimal for those whose immunity isn’t already deficient.As evidenced in the official figures which contradict the fear. The average Covid mortality at 82 years 4 month exceeds the average lifespan: *statistically* “Covid” prolongs life. “Covid” is what in England we’d ordinarily call a cold.
There is a difference, beyond mere semantics, between ‘choosing not to’ avail oneself of the opportunity to be vaccinated, and ‘not choosing to’ avail oneself of it. This is an important distinction, as it affects how policy might help overcome the problem. It seems feasible that many people are ‘not choosing to’. If that’s the case, the response must be to make it easier for them to change course. Whereas for those actively deciding they don’t want the vax, that’s a different challenge, requiring persuasion etc. Politicians need to avoid lumping these groups together, and the same is true for journalists. Even the phrase ‘vaccine hesitancy’ tends to create an image of ‘choosing not to’.
“And while it’s tempting to say that if people aren’t getting vaccinated, it’s their own fault and their own problem, it’s not entirely true.”
Not sure the “it’s never anyones fault” argument works, and it is more than a little insulting to individuals. It only works if you believe people have no ability to make decisions, they are simply subjects with no agency. Presumably you would argue people should not be punished for crimes, or should make no effort to improve their lives, for example. Presdestination has always been a pretty nihilistic world view.
Who says that any of the current vaccines will have the slightest effect with any of the new variants?
There are several flu vaccines: a committee takes a best guess at which variant is most likely and hence which vaccine to use for the coming season. If they are wrong the vaccine not be effective.
Are we supposed to think that “vaccine resistance” in viruses is the same phenomenon as anti-biotic resistance in bacteria? Very naughty.
I seem to be missing some of my comments. Could it be that Unherd deteted them?
I see that some of mine are marked for ‘approval’, even though they simply state basic facts. I would imagine that some believer in the government has been through marking out such comments, and getting them removed if they can.
Thanks for a really interesting article and for the impressively wide variety of BTL comments that it has created. Unfortunately the approval process for Novavax has been delayed so we won’t have that vaccine available for a few more months.
A whole pile of excuses there…not much else. Can’t even be bothered to go through them all.
‘Emergency use authorisation’ vaccine to be employed in the absence of any proven alternative but Meta analysis of Ivermectin now clearly indicates a prophylactic efficacy to rival vaccines and a safety record of the highest magnitude. No MSN outlet reveals this. If every argument such as this piece by Tom is focused on a single solution then the dissent will always exist, and those in authority will manipulate that dissent in accordance to their will. Finally people like Bret Wenstein have challenged the MSN narrative. I hope unherd follows soon
Tom loves the bling. Truth and honesty is a chump’s game
Even a grade schooler can reason that if a vaccinated person gets covid and/or dies from it, it’s because the vaccine i.e. product didn’t do its job. I’d ask for my money back.
I should think the medical establishment would be pleased, happy, elated, to have this sizable and varied group of unvaccinated people to compare in coming years to the vaccinated. I do hope they are keeping track – keep me posted.
Tom writes: “One senior scientist I spoke to said that some of the things we can do are pretty obvious, like finding healthcare providers who can speak the predominant minority language in affected areas. They’re not necessarily easy — Urdu-speaking health professionals don’t grow on trees — but we ought to try.” Perhaps so, for the moment, but if so, doesn’t this health problem point to a pretty glaring immigration problem? If you can’t communicate with these people in English, what are they doing in the UK? Seriously, what are they doing living in the very heart of the English-speaking world without speaking English, or without speaking it very well. Are there other languages near the top of the list? What are they?
Anyone can see where mr Chivers’ argument is ending up, although he couldn’t quite bring himself to state it….”but even a relatively small number of vaccine sceptics, if they’re clustered enough, could make the opening-up go very badly wrong.” or this one “there does seem to be an attitude among some people, not just in Government, that vaccine-hesitant people have made their bed and now they need to lie in it. They’ve been offered the jab, they’ve turned it down, and it’s now their own problem”. It’s easy to see what Tom actually wants to happen to the hesitants: forced incarceration at home, no passport for entry to shops or basic government services, no travel, no religious gatherings and so on. On what grounds would that be fair and just, Tom? Because of a virus with a mortality rate equal to a severe flu? Because the government doesn’t want to spend the money to enhance hospital capacity to deal with this epidemic? For these dubious reasons, the hesitants must be forced to accept the medical wonder that is the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine? These hesitants have done the math and discovered that in many places vaccine deaths and injuries outweigh virus deaths? Even disregarding those stats, they can name between 15 and 30 sound reasons why it is extremely risky to take the jab? Please take a look at the recent MIT study that credits the hesitant with a far higher data agility than the vaccine and lockdown cultists. Only in totalitarian states can a government force entire groups of people to hand over their bodies to the State. With writers like mr Chivers England is moving in that direction very fast. The threat by the British cabinet of not ending the lockdowns as long as there is a small group of hesitants reminds me of headmasters threatening or imposing collective punishment for the misdeeds of a few pupils in the hope that everyone will gang up on the few to make sure they comply. In those situations the headmaster, being a total power-hungry authoritarian creep, should be dismissed. We should get rid of our authoritarian governments and their lackeys like Chivers by outright rebellion.
Totally agree with Claire Lac. Chivers seems unaware of the existence of natural or cross-reactive immunity, or of the 1250 deaths following covid jabs in the UK. Long-term effects will only be exacerbated by repeated boosters.
“Most importantly: while I understand Hancock’s eagerness to say that most of the people who are in hospital have chosen not to get the vaccine in the end, vaccine scepticism is everyone’s problem, not just the sceptics themselves.”
If it is everyone’s problem, which I agree, then everyone should have a say about what to do with people who refuse the vaccination, including enforcement by law.
When Jury service forms are also printed in Urdu and 14 other languages just make clear on the jab invite : no vaxx, no hospital bed waiting.
Our Govt failed to use preventative anti-virals right at the beginning of this ghastly saga and instead spent millions on fear-mongering, and Hollywood-style propaganda promoting no liability, experimental vaccines, still in phase three of the trials with no concern for long term safety such as pathogenic priming. All this while they continue the coercion and the fear while censoring good professors and scientists who warn about the dangers. But don’t worry – Johnson and Hancock claim that the vaccine is “safe”. And now our mendacious Govt are trying to hide the vaccine deaths and side effects – but in the USA Senate, Senator Hall is revealing the shocking truth:: https://twitter.com/i/status/1392778728199970816
“People don’t usually choose the communities they grow up in, and if you live in one where lots of people don’t trust the British establishment for whatever reason, I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s your own fault.” Really? So just whose fault is it then? People who’ve had the vaccine? The government? The NHS? If people are unable to think for themselves, they must expect the results that that entails. I think most of us are getting rather irritated by this sort of nonsense. The unvaccinated are causing problems for more responsible citizens and they need to be called out for their anti-social behaviour.
Plus, while the vaccines are very good, they’re not perfect: some vaccinated people will still die as a result of other people’s refusal to take the vaccine. If a very large number of people get the vaccine, a small percentage of them will die, and a small percentage of a very large number is still a large number. Tom, the doctor missed the bit about the small number of people who die after taking the vaccine, too. And the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever, beyond government scaremongering, that the variant is more transmissible, and if it is, is it more or less deadly.
This is a very poor article by your high standards.
Ian, can you explain why a vaccinated person might die as a result of another person’s decision not to take the vaccine ?
The evidence for asymptomatic transmission is tissue paper thin but let’s assume it exists. The vaccine does not stop bestow upon you an invisible force field against which the virus bounces off, you can still catch the virus and hence pass it on to others. The vaccine does not stop transmission (see government websites ) but it will help you to develop milder symptoms. Hence you will be just as contagious as an asymptomatic non vaccinated person who might also be playing host to the virus. There is no reason why the likelihood of a non vaccinated person catching the virus is any different to the likelihood of a vaccinated person.
If we put asymptomatic transmission to one side, then all an individual of either vaccine persuasion need do if they develop symptoms is to stay at home and avoid coughing and spluttering over others.
Another group that are sometimes resistant are those who suffer from mental illness. A friend of mine suffers from depression and he doesn’t mind if he get the virus and it kills him. I want to make the point about how he might pass on the virus to others, but I am not sure how to make that point to him without it being counter productive to his reasoning. And of course I do not want him to get it either,
According to the recent data the vaccine does not stop you catching the virus nor stop you passing it on. At present it is only thought to lessen the effects of having the disease.
It’s fair to say that everyone has been warned.
Some anti-vaxxers are the same people who are quite happy to smoke, snort, inject or otherwise ingest substantances containing who knows what from who knows where.
lol…no sweeping generalisation there then!
The real vaccine hesitancy comes from the South Asian community. I am sure you don’t mean to paint that community with your offensive opinion?
There are cultural and mistrust issues that need to be addressed within that community so that those that are vulnerable can be protected. Although I continue to assert that the best protection for the vulnerable is for the vast majority of us to get the infection and develop natural immunity. I’ve had it.It was mild.
Vaccine hesitancy is not the same as “anti-vaxxer”. They are not trying to tell others not to vaccinate, they just decline to participate in something that is, so far at least, a personal choice. Same goes for masks, which were initially proposed as an optional measure.
When it comes to striving to influence others, I would actually associate that with “vaxxers” (and “maskers”).
I trust Her Majesty’s Government is stockpiling supplies of Zyclon B?
AstraZeneca could do with the business, after the EU fiasco.
If militant ignorance compels one to reject the vaccine, could we not expect chivalry to compel same to refuse the ICU bed and the ventilator lest some asthmatic child need life saving?
Fun word game, fill in the blank:
The one thing a person using the word ignorant shouldn’t be is _____.
The common property problem that is the NHS is now to be used as an argument for taking an insufficiently tested vaccine!
And where did the militant bit come from? I am not aware of people like me demonstrating or aggressively confronting law-enforcers.
Exaggeration and pomposity are the hallmarks of the fearful ignorant.
Those who argue against the vaccination are missing a very important point.
The choice is vaccination or Covid. We know Covid is very dangerous. So do you want dangerous covid – or possibly tricky vaccine that has been well tested and approved ?
First the vaccines have not been well or extensively tested. Second no vaccine has been fully approved – they have only received emergency use authorizations both in the US, UK and Europe. Third, the incidence of severe side effects exceeds those observed over the last 20 years for all other vaccines combined. Fourth, Covid is only dangerous in the elderly (over 70s) and those with co-morbidities. For those under 50, the risk of a serious outcome following a COVID infection is negligible. And indeed for the 12-30 yr old crowd, COVID usually manifests itself as nothing more than a common cold. In other words, protect those at high risk, and leave everybody else alone. Had we done so, we would have achieved herd immunity a long time ago and vaccines could have been entirely confined to those at high risk.
If anyone is genuinely frightened of taking a vaccination then they should be listened to respectfully and treated kindly. Likewise, anyone who is at all at risk from severe side effects shouldn’t take a vaccine.
To say Covid is ‘only dangerous’ in the ‘elderly’ (70+) and those with ‘co-morbidities’ (a rather inaccurate catch-all in itself) has to be incorrect.
Deaths in England, Jan ’21:
50-59 yrs -1,574
60-69 yrs. 3,354
COVID-19 confirmed deaths in England (to 31 January 2021): report – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
As neither of us is an epidemiologist, I am not sure we can really conjecture about ‘herd immunity’. It would seem that in a pandemic situation that wouldn’t be achieved, ‘naturally’, for years. The more people vaccinated (admittedly, maybe quite a few as a precaution only i.e. younger age groups?) then fewer instances of illness and death, hopefully.
Even if true, I’d definetely prefer Covid to the gene therapies.
I bet lots of people gasping to breathe in intensive care are all thinking “It could have been worse – I might have had gene therapy.”
A less than 0.2% IFR is hardly “dangerous”. Ignorance on the other hand…
Ignorance on the other hand?
The worldometers site shows Hungary having a total fatality rate of 0.3% and the NYC website show New York City higher than 0.35%. As that includes both infected and non infected, claiming the IFR is below 0.2 % is incorrect.
Just pluck a number out of thin air, it’s what the authorities are doing. How do they know how many are infected? PCR tests? Lateral flow tests? There is no test that can confirm infection, that requires a clinical diagnosis. And what about all the people who have symptoms so mild they don’t bother with a test? And what about fatalities? Does dying with COVID count? Never did for any other disease but either way, if you have no accurate figure of how many people are actually infected and no way of telling how many were actually killed by the disease then how do you get an accurate IFR? I strongly suspect it’s way lower than 0.2% so in a roundabout way I agree, 0.2% is likely incorrect.
However you slice, dice or manipulate the numbers, it’s certainly not dangerous.
Thank you for admitting you plucked a number out of thin air. And those numbers are with health care systems not totally overwhelmed. And then ignore that the illness can cause serious side effects on people who survive.
You misread Fred, it’s the authorities plucking numbers out of thin air and I explained clearly for you exactly how we can prove that’s all they can be doing.
As for the “serious side effects” you might want to be more specific. Unless you’re just talking anecdotally in which case you’re in the same territory as the authorities with their speculative figures .
I apologise, I still cannot see your source for IFR = 0.2 %.
No it is not. There is nothing to suggest you will inevitably get Covid if you are not vaccinated.
Except the vaccines are neither well tested nor approved, they are still very much in the trial phase and for some people can pose a greater threat than the virus. For some they can pose a greater threat for people when exposed to the wild virus. We are nowhere near knowing how many for whom this may be the ultimate problem…
No silly! 99.95% of humanity are not concerned by SARS-CoV-2. For 99.95% of humanity, this is just a bad cold.
Every person who refuses a vaccine and ends up in ICU with covid is someone who is stopping a cancer patient getting treated. It is the ultimate selfish act.
That is perhaps the most ignorant comment I have heard. First, cancer patients are generally not in the ICU, at least not as a matter of course. Second, the ICUs have never been filled to capacity either in the US or UK. i.e. The health services, and the emergency health services were nover operating beyond capacity, even at the height of the two major COVID waves (last March/April and the current flu season (Oct 2020-April/May 2021) which is rapidly coming to a close.
‘The health services, and the emergency health services were nover operating beyond capacity,…’ I think you need to evidence that. If not ICUs then certainly individual institutions were reporting critical care wards full, January 2021 – Covid-19: Critical care wards full in hospitals across England – BBC News
We were made very much aware health services were under intense pressure.
If people avoid jabs only because the ‘Government’ has been behind the campaign, then yes, if there are spikes in hospital patient numbers, those same people need to think a bit longer and a bit harder, maybe? I personally see it as my civic obligation to try and keep hospitals clear by participating.
You are totally wrong the NHS was triaging and not ventilating many elderly .
For the past 5 or 6 years the BBC have put on excellent series about the NHS. They simply film what is going on. From the first program 5-6 years ago you saw operations being postponed for lack of an ICU bed. I believe in the first program it was an operation to remove cancer of the throat. Often the patient will not need an ICU bed after the op, but the fact they may, means 1 has to be available. You could watch this years series and become a little better informed.
Because they increased their pre Covid critical care in March using various strategies e.g. re-purposing general and acute beds, cancelling elective procedures, allowing critical care nurses to look after more than 1 patient at a time, transferring staff to critical care from other units etc. etc. All much more complicated than simple bed numbers.
In terms of ventilator beds, 23 trusts spent a cumulative 81 days at 100% saturation of their surge ventilator bed capacity in the first wave.
Anecdotally, January 2021 was worse than March / April 2020 and critical care nationally squeaked through by the skin of its teeth – I have pals who work in a variety of ICUs.
This is what happens when you run a “lean and mean” NHS
You are clearly not medically trained. Once you put Covid in ICU you cannot put other issues with them.
Clearly a government stooge. This is the most facile, perverse and stupidly ignorant comment I’ve read.
Absolutely, Tom Chivers.
It’s a matter of civic responsibility, I’d say. For those in the most vulnerable groups, can there be many legitimate excuses, really?
Yesterday you achieved 215 ‘thumbs down’ on one subject alone.
Yet modesty has made you delete them all! Or was it just embarrassment?
You must try harder today, and remember “publish and be damned”.*
(* Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.)
That’s impressive, I didn’t read that comment, it must have been a doozie.
Cumulative total over perhaps a dozen posts.
Chater’s chastened.
sorely
Mr Stanhope,
Sir, yes I must ‘try harder’. ‘Publish and be damned’ – I always thought it was Byron’s. But now I know.
(If you did count all 215 ‘thumbs down’, then, sir, may I suggest you have too much time on your hands.)
Toodle-pip
JC
May be it is a matter of civic responsibility not to take it