First of all, let me say what a fantastically well thought and well written piece. Excellent!
What frightens me most about (the reaction to) Covid is that whilst it is obviously something to be avoided if one can, it is not serious enough to have warranted the reactions seen by some countries. In the UK we were told that lockdown and other measures were being put in place only so as to ‘flatten the curve and take the strain off the NHS’. Yet here we are 18 months later and the hysteria over a very common type of virus is still in full force.
The fact that we are sacrificing the economy and the futures of our children for a virus whose average age of victim is over 81 years old (higher than the average life expectancy) is utterly ridiculous.
And now, (according to this article) people are blaming the mutations on those who have not been vaccinated…..utter poppycock….Indeed, there is a body of thought that suggests it is the vaccines that are causing the mutations as the virus struggles to survive. However, since the vaccines seem not to stop the risk of infection but just to stop the worst of the symptoms, it appears if that too could be incorrect.
Covid 19 or SARS2 is a new virus, and the human defense (immune) system will take time to combat it, but combat it, it will—–as it has always done with this type of virus throughout the history of humanity.
The over reaction to this virus is very suspicious indeed.
I am chipping in here because of what I see as the dangers of revisionism which filled me with a horror “as yet unseen” when I read the words, slipped in the above comment, about what we were told in the UK about the justification and reasons for lockdown. To my mind the reaction to Covid was pretty much universal globally and really no country got it better than any other and I believe that the idea that in UK is was all an effort to “flatten the curve” for the benefit of the NHS is like insanity upon insanity undermining my very experience. Was it really only a horrible dream in the UK?…. It was never just about logistics! In the UK it was primarily, upfront and overwhelmingly about death rates just like other countries and it was an insanity which would not have existed if it were all about the logistics of NHS coping. Just like the anti-Brexit movement all those hordes including the great and good who were taking to media and stating that we could not possibly survive outside the EU will now be back-peddling furiously with many possibly saying “of course when I talked about the impossibility of survival outside of the EU I only meant that such a scenario would emerge where we did not get a deal or that when they talked about it they only meant that we would be up to 2% GDP points better off if we stayed which they would point out is a considerable sum!”
With regard to the article itself. To me the key thing is about the difference between acute or personal choice matters (like the taking of a vaccine) and the chronic and deeply significant aspect of mask wearing and lockdown and there is a constellation of difference between the two. On the matter of vaccination about which there have been many comments I see it as a matter which, while requiring vigilance, is really transient. Also, given my views about transience, I see the focus on vaccines in the comments as an extension of my concern about revisionism as other aspects are far more important. Mask wearing and lockdown, is something which people have willingly, even gleefully, embraced and that for me is a concern for the very broad evolution of humanity. The attitude behind mask wearing and lockdown exhibited by humanity is major and, effectively, permanent as an attitude of humanity towards its place in nature where humanity is not only living as to date as if it were apart from nature (and massively abusing nature) but is now viewing nature as positively hostile and something to be held at arm’s length each day and every day.
I place the “heurism question of reasonableness” referred to in the article also as part of the transient aspects similar to vaccination. I place it as an imposed phenomenon even as the reality portrayed in Orwell’s 1984 is an imposed reality by Big Brother. In being an imposed phenomenon, even if unexpressed in Orwell’s book, there is a hope in the reader’s own mind that one day reality or truth will shine through and Big Brother will be thrown off. There is no such relatively immediate hope in relation to mask wearing and lockdown which, being so happily and readily embraced, is a chosen evolution by humanity itself and not imposed and so is the future.
Many nations now want to roll out a system of QR codes for the vaccinated. Anyone not vaccinated will be unable to enter restaurants, bars, or any other place large groups of people mingle. I’m hearing from my vaccinated friends in South Australia that every time they enter a store, the information is sent to a central database. I also read recently of a British woman who posted an unpopular opinion on social media had her bank accounts frozen.
What we are witnessing is the rapid build-up of a surveillance state infrastructure. This, more than anything else, is why I am so reluctant to take the vaccine. What depresses me more than anything is that it seems that the majority of people are embracing this system and shaming those who resist it. The vitriol and hatred of the vaccinated against the unvaccinated has taken me by complete surprise. In my idealism I always believed that we in the West had outgrown this medieval mindset long ago.
Has also been already implemented in Ireland. First for indoor dining and pubs, now extended to cinemas (which were already open without it), theatre and other indoor entertainment. Ostensibly to “protect the unvaccinated” ( that’s what they actually said), bit it’s really about coercion and Ireland has the highest rate of vaccination in EU (after Malta).
I went the easy way. First, lucky me…..I managed to spend 3 months in Sweden at the start of the pandemic…..and another 10 weeks in Austria in October 2020 until January 2021, escaping the absolutely mad french lockdown.
As to the vaccine, the sooner the better…..I knew there would be some sorts of health pass and having my nose bored into 5 times before being vaccinated, convinced me that having a bleeding nose wasn’t game on compared to the jab.
The world has gone mad, this is an undisputed fact …..however, I don’t see why I should join the loopy farm party pulling my hair because of a vaccine. Just get the jab and get on with life…..might I remind you that this commodity is rather short in its lifespan ?
J Bryant
2 years ago
A very reasonable article, I would say.
Hey Unherd, how about commissioning this barrister to write an article about legal remedies available to people who are subject not just to cancellation but who lose their livelihoods due to progressive activists and their claims of racism or some other kind of –ism?
I would tell him to go a bit more for the brevity of the main argument, and stick in some other side issues, to give it a bit more kick. He could mention the, say, Ivermectin thing – what with ‘Reasonable care’ being mentioned.
Dr Campbell or Bret Weinstein on the Meta-study on Ivermectin are good places to begin on youtube. YET do a search on Ivermectin and what comes is the most blatant Algorithm Tampering ever! Hundreds and hundreds of anti Ivermectin links – a very great of them outright lies (Hospitals and poison control centers overloaded with Ivermectin poisoning – dozens of these will be there, but all Fake News – yet allowed to stand) – Wile Not One link to Ivermectin being useful! Evin though a billion pills have been used for covid in developing countries – and hundreds of studied also in developing world as NOT ONE Ivermectin study has been done in the West! (meta-study shows 62% -86% improvement)
The theory being that it works on covid – and the Vaccine was released under emergency license on the basis there was NO Medicine which did work. Thus if Ivermectin did work the vaccine license would become invalid. It is the $$$$$$$$$$$
I have my horse de-wormer Ivermectin in the bathroom, and my zinc, D3, C, and Querctin on the table……
Or maybe there are hundreds of anti ivermectin links because the vast majority of medical professionals believe that using it to treat Covid is nonsense. I find it strange that a man who proudly states he won’t take a medically approved vaccine to ward off the effects of Covid, whilst at the same time taking an unproven substance to try and get the same result
What Sanford clearly stated was that the search results are being rigged to NOT reflect the true story. There are thousands of doctors and scientists around the world getting PROVEN success with Ivermectin, and hundreds of studies showing its undoubted efficacy. Alas, the results are getting repressed due to the obvious reasons that Sanford says and many people naivrly beleive. Whatever the search results throw up. The fact that you have bought into the lies that Ivermectin doesn’t work just shows how successful their efforts have been at covering up the truth. For anyone willing to do even a little research will quickly find out that what the MSM and search engines are telling you about Ivermectin is definitely nothing like the truth, but when one lookd at where the bulk of their ad revenues come from it isn’t hard to understand why.
The Wuhan leak does look like a cover up from the Chinese, with large parts of the medical profession scared of losing large parts of their funding if they challenged it. To me that’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s simply the danger of allowing institutions becoming too reliant on money from bad foreign governments.
Likewise the vaccine passports aren’t a conspiracy theory either, they’re simply a terrible piece of legislation from governments who feel like they have to be seen to be doing something to control the virus.
If ivermectin worked as you claim, don’t you think one of these billion dollar multinationals would have found a use for it somehow and sold it up as a wonder cure? Instead of a few lads on some backwater YouTube channel claiming to have seen through the deep state?
You completely missed my point. Until recently, the Wuhan Lab Leak and Vaccine Passports were dismissed as conspiracy theories.
As for Ivermectin, I’m afraid you are simply very naive. There is no money to be made from it, so it has to be discredited.
Which bit is a conspiracy? Vaccine passports? Vaccinating children? Booster jabs? Wuhan lab leak? Mandatory vaccines?
At what point do people who use the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ realise that researching and questioning are just normal things to do. Doing such things in times gone by would have been the intelligent thing to do. It is what all thinking people did, and is how mankind has progressed.
Now, if you dare to question the single narrative that is given to us by the WHO/CDC/NIH, you get called a conspiracy theorist, which is very odd.
Because of the behaviour of governments, large organisations and businesses, corporate media, big tech, compromised scientists and the like, it is incumbent on the intelligent and the curious to be sceptics. The stories like the Wuhan lab leak and vaccine passports only serve to underline this.
Seriously, can you believe organisations like this? The FDA recently tweeted “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” This is about a medicine that is safe and has had 4 billion plus doses administered to humans.
Then the recent bollocks that LIT corporate and social media to the extent that Rolling Stone (the most inflammatory of the bunch) posted this headline (then edited it): “Gunsh*t Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says.” In fact many of the MSM ran this story without checking details and the incurious just lapped it up.
There are many substances that have been administered to humans and animals, ketamine for instance, that doesn’t mean that they all work on different virus’
Doses certainly make a difference. In the case of Ivermectin however you have to take industrial amounts to make you keel over. I exaggerate slightly but this is a drug that is safer than aspirin, that has been handed out like smarties to hundreds of millions of people. Their usage was hardly carefully monitored. To date after 40 years there are about 20 deaths recorded – ref. WHO.
I’m not referring to it being poisonous, as you say you need to mess up the doses or take the wrong kind for it to do damage. However just because it’s not killing people doesn’t mean it is an effective treatment.
Whilst I’m not exactly trusting of the morals of big companies, I’d be willing to bet if it was any use they’d have found a way to market it as such. A potential Covid suppressant would be worth billions after all, I find it hard to believe that they’ve missed out while some crockpot in the dark reaches of the internet has discovered it personally
It’s out of patent so there is very little money to be made by drug companies. They have just spent billions creating new drugs, they wish to recoup that outlay by selling them. If IVM was proven to be effective treatment for Covid then this would be problematic for them.
That does not prove anything of course, and based on the available evidence, the ‘vaccine’ is currently most people’s best option.
So in 5 years time when trillions has been made from vaccines there will be a study on a ‘new’ drug called Iverschmectin and the drug companies will happily sell it to us as a great new cure for Covid.
it is not unproven. There are dozens of everyday substances that easily kill viruses. Lots of work still to do but vs. various viruses already effective. https[colon]//pubmed[dot]ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32533071/
https[colon]//www[dot]ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/
…and many more links
I agree with you. Taking these home remedies is meant to show that you are an original thinker, that nobody can push you around, that you can understand science (whatever that means). But this can’t translate to a population of millions. Why don’t I put a voodoo doll under the pillow at night to ward off evil spirits?
For countries, for millions of people, you have to follow medical advice, even if it turns out to be wrong when history is written in 50 years from now. Quack remedies based on a paper somebody has read on the Internet just don’t answer the question.
It’s bizarre, it’s like the opposite end of the spectrum to comments section on sites such as the guardian. Instead of the purity spiral of constantly trying to prove how woke they are by ignoring basic human biology and parroting divisive rhetoric such as the critical race theory, the other end want to prove their differences to those people by ignoring basic science such as that we can see by the reduced hospital numbers following vaccination, and so desperate to stand out that they’ll label anybody who defends the vaccines as sheep while blindly following any dissenting voice they find on the internet
Exactly. It is all about showing how clever you are. My neighbour was telling me recently that he has read a paper about vaccination which points out a lot of negatives. So he won’t get vaccinated. His choice I suppose but it is like saying “I’ve read something you haven’t read, so I’m cleverer than you are”.
“…ignoring basic science such as that we can see by the reduced hospital numbers following vaccination…”
Science? And you may be surprised, I do not know what numbers you are looking at but you seem not to notice the current numbers?
Compare the peak of hospitalisations and deaths pre vaccination (which was during lockdown) to now when society is fully open and large numbers of double jabbed. To me that shows vaccines work
So the unvaccinated breed mutations? I clicked on the link and was taken to the Guardian – no surprises there then and zero risk of any other position from The Guardian. As both vaccinated and unvaccinated can catch and spread the disease, why would it only be the unvaccinated that are driving variants? Earlier in the year it was posited that mass vaccination with a narrowly focused, non sterilising vaccine in a pandemic would drive ever more infectious variants to develop as the virus is driven to evolve. In this scenario you see the vaccinated inadvertently being the problem and it certainly makes sense to me. What about Unherd producing an article discussing variant risk factors?
Just last week, Brett Weinstein in conversation with Joe Rogan said the same thing: that in his opinion the spread of variants was undoubtably linked to the fact of the vaccine being ‘leaky’, therefore exerting concentrated evolutionary pressure on the virus.
I have to say, I’m still not convinced that this is necessarily the case. But it is at very least a sensible enough hypothesis which, in the absence of stronger evidence to the contrary, should give strident vaccine advocates pause for concern.
At issue: was Delta the product of an inferior vaccine trial in India or was Mu the product of the Chinese inferior vaccine in Peru? There are reputable scientists that are quite worried about these experiments.
I understand the argument to be that partially vaccinating a country risks variants arising that have immunity to the vaccine. Once you get past the herd immunity threshold, the risk drops
It’s not immediately obvious to me that either the vaccinated or unvaccinated per se drive the generation of new variants. The argument by Brett Weinstein regarding increased evolutionary pressure as a result of a leaky vaccine is certainly correct. However, recall that the UK alpha variant arose before vaccination, and the Indian delta variant arose in a country where vaccination levels were negligible at the time (and are still negligible). Also recall that the Indians got over the delta variant pretty quickly (i.e. the delta wave was short-lived with rapid rise and rapid fall). All of which suggests that the virus will mutate no matter what simply as a result of replication errors, as RNA viruses are wont to do. The real question then is whether in the coming months variants are generated that are largely resistant to antibodies generated by vaccination. Those variants are clearly likely to be driven by infection of the vaccinated rather than the immunologically naive unvaccinated.
As for ivermectin, the suppression of its appropriate use in the US and UK is to my mind nothing short of criminal. In the appropriate dose it is completely safe, and therefore worth giving a shot if infected, whether one is vaccinated or unvaccinated. Whether ivermectin really works is another matter but together with the appropriate antibiotic (doxycycline or azithromycin) to prevent secondary pneumonia, zinc, vit C and vit D, it sure can’t do any harm.
A major force in the production of new variants is ‘people whose immune system is compromised’, particularly if you decide to treat them by giving them plasma from people who have recovered from covid. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03291-y
explained for a popular audience here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-may-arise-in-people-with-compromised-immune-systems/
So while the unvaccinated may have been more at risk for the severe version of the disease that might make the doctors at the hospital stick plasma in you — the bulk of people with bad immune systems are the ones who are also doubly vaccinated, because they were prioritised for precisely this reason.
At some point (who is measuring this?) you can expect that doubly or triply vaccinated immuno-compromised people are the people most at risk for severe illness. The people whose immune systems are so broken that a vaccine doesn’t invoke much of a response are going to be at high risk for severe disease no matter how many times you jab them.
How the asymptomatic long carriers of the disease, whose immune systems never clear the thing and who don’t know, because they aren’t sick factor into the ‘where do variants come from’ equation is still unknown. We don’t even know how many of those people there are, for instance.
Yes, I do realize that mutations happen regardless of vaccination – I was simply making a point in reference to the statement that the unvaccinated were driving variants.
As for Ivermectin, I agree with you and don’t know if we will ever know the truth. There is too much money involved and too many people have skin in the game. To me it has been shocking to watch and learn the extent of corruption in many governments, industries, organisations, media houses and businesses. This even after the past decade and a half in a large corporate (stuffed to the rafters with psychopaths, narcissists and other creatures with various pathologies)!
I did read that India introduced Ivermectin during the surge with very good results in many states – the most obvious outlier being Tamil Nadu where the governor (MK Stalin – yes) banned Ivermectin and introduced Remdesivir. The cases soared.
I continue to take it on and off during epidemic waves and it nailed a recent cold I had in 24 hours. Or maybe it was simply a 24 hour cold, which is certainly novel to me!
Anecdote should never replace properly conducted trials. Just because you read something once doesn’t make it true. How come there wasn’t a conspiracy against dexamethasone which is cheap and off patent? There is no conspiracy – if ivermectin is effective it’s at too low a level to have been detected in trials so far, which means that any effect is likely to be non-existent or trivial.
There was no hoo ha about dexamethasone because it is a treatment of symptoms in hospital and not an anti viral. And there are plenty of Ivermectin trials. Sheesh.
I have to apologise – I have been doing some more reading and it seems that ivermectin is quite effective and safe in normal doses. I have been too trusting. However, I’m afraid that I don’t buy your distinction between the two drugs as an explanation as to why the WHO has taken against ivermectin. Is it because some of the trials have been conducted in the Third World?
Dexamethasone is used widely for a variety of different conditions. It is not a prophylactic and is not an anti-viral (which is the Ivermectin claim), therefore it is no threat to the vaccines.
How come there wasn’t a conspiracy against dexamethasone which is cheap and off patent?
Because dexamethasone isn’t a threat to kill the emergency use authorizations. Dexamethasone doesn’t claim to reduce viral load, it is merely a drug to treat the symptoms.
Come on. Be a little realistic. For sure nothing is 100% safe. Even ice cream when too much is ingested! Ivermectin is a safe as tylenol, paracetamol and advil, all available OTC.
So the dreaded ‘availability heuristic’ has become our yardstick of acceptable behavior….
This at a time the MSM, Government, Pharma/Medical Industrial Complex and their lackeys NHS, PHE, CDC, FDA, and the Social Media/Tech industry – the teaching professions and the hard Left Unions which manage them….., are bombarding us with fake news, repressed Scientific advice and news, hysterical advice told with horror stories to back them up, Government issue Fas *ist level lockdowns, – Police harass park bench sitters in London, Military troops harass beach users in Australia, Indian Police beat the public with batons…And meanwhile the Central banks create so much debt, and slow productivity, that the global economy Must fail into a disaster not seen since WWII.
Biden’s recent mass vaccine, totalitarian, campaign has proven this all is not about health, as he mandates hundreds of millions be vaccinated, even against their will – Although as many as a hundred million have natural immunity, which is superior to vax antigen derived immuinty. They refuse to allow this superior, natural, immunity over the artificial! This cannot be about health.
What it is is Pure Collusion. the ‘availability heuristic’ is not real, it is completely manufactured. Yet as the writer says – legally it stands, it is the guide we are legally judged by ““You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee” and the fake news, lying Government, and sleazy self interested Medical, are all warping what is ‘reasonable’. It is no longer Possible for the truth to be told in this new-normal.
Something is afoot, the Global Elites must be supposed to exist in this unanimity of repression from every source in society. So lets turn to the World Economic Forum (WEF), and Klaus Schwab, for some reassurance it will work out.
” “History shows that epidemics have been the great resetter of countries’ economy and social fabric. Why should it be different with COVID-19?” ― Klaus Schwab, Covid-19, The Great Reset
People are not thoughtful or reasonable (or kind, nice, decent etc) en mass (quite often as individuals too) sad to say, and what might be rational will always fall to that which is generally believed to be true my the many (what is fashionable and easy to understand – presumably because others think it to…. (See Anatole France and a million foolish things), this evolves, and the courts take note of this. However instead of screaming at a mad word (a dispiriting task), why not treat truth propagation in the same way as untruth, morally distasteful yes, but, if it can be made as popular as believing bollocks, people may believe instead in something that is not bollocks. Dismal I know, but people always adore those magic beans, and once they buy them, they are the only way to go. Probably won’t work, idiots are idiots and very attached to it at that.
The Black Death not only reset the medieval economy it also laid the foundations for the modern western world through the reformation. Reset is unavoidable. We need to make it our Reset.
As long as the reset isn’t the one proposed by the WEF. Otherwise we’ll all end up eating lab produced food & owning nothing. Though, apparently we’ll be happy. Personally, I think it’s more likely we’ll see the great backlash. History shows us that when people’s freedom is threatened long enough, they always rise up.
Haha, you missed a trick there by not capitalising the Great Backlash. I do like the idea and I was thinking about all the stuff that is retrospectively believed to have occurred in society after the Black Death. It might be an interesting thought experiment to try to come up with the more unusual results that might emerge from the current situation. And it would be wonderful to find some contemporary analysis from during the initial attack of the plague up see what people thought was happening and might happen in the future. I’m picturing long essays about Ye Grate Reseteth.
These days they’re all believed to be part of the same thread. Rather wonderful cause and effect. Might be interesting to try to work out if the same journey might have occurred without the Black Death. A friend of mine wrote a great short story in school using the butterfly effect about someone who went back in time and stopped the fire of London.
I think we’ve crossed a line somewhere in this “pandemic”. Something isn’t quite right in peoples’ heads anymore. This thought bears some developing and a lot of polishing, but it has a lot to do with the death of public Christianity in the west.
That may seem a strange connection to make, but remember, Christianity is a whole philosophy of life, not just a belief in the divinity of Jesus. It’s a modus vivendi and a reference against which you measure what you experience. Some years ago, Peter Hitchens opined that public Christianity died in the mud of Flanders, and since then, we in the west have all been warming ourselves on the embers of a fire to which we have contributed nothing and which has slowly been going out. I suspect the WHO’s declaration of a pandemic will, with hindsight, be the moment when history will declare the last spark of the fire finally went out.
I believe you are correct. Something is not quite right anymore. I think we are reverting to a pre-Christian mindset.
Nick Wright
2 years ago
We’re seeing very similar issues in the financial services sector, where the government seems intent on protecting the populace from itself while damaging private enterprise.
The left-wing parties are simply continuing their philosophy of paying people to do nothing (and protecting them from evil money-makers); presumably, the right-wing governments are applying their paternalistic principles (and protecting its core voters to the cost of all others). In neither case are hard-working taxpayers being considered.
D Glover
2 years ago
Two questions;
Is there empirical evidence that mask wearing cuts the risk of covid?
Is there empirical evidence that hand washing cuts the risk of covid?
Obviously I’m aware that hand washing is a good thing from a general hygiene aspect, but has it anything to do with a respiratory virus?
I believe there is some evidence that mask wearing helps against COVID – some recent results from villages in Bangla Desh showed a 9% reduction in cases, as mask wearing improved from 14% to 42% of the population. It is admittedly not overwhelming, and that for handwashing is thinner, AFAIK. The point is that for both measures there are strong theoretical reasons to think that it ought to help (unlike a random drug, let us say). For handwashing I believe it came form experience with another virus.But then, it is hard to get definite proof – and as you know there is no proper trial to prove that putting on a parachute makes it less dangerous to jump out of aeroplanes. But then it is a relatively cheap measure and (again unlike some random drug) unlikely to a make people believe they are so safe they can ignore the risks.
But Fogh, I read that mask study and it has one Very weird part–
There is NO difference in mask/unmasked for people under 50 years old. The only documented difference of covid spread in masking/not masking is in over 50 ages – that must mean it is very flawed
I saw this in The Economist, who are reasonably reliable as journalists go. It is not overwhelming (I did say “some evidence”). There could be an explanation for what you see, but to be honest I would rather accept that the evidence for mask wearing is by no means conclusive (as I hope was the original message) and not spend the time to check through the details.
Every mask study is contaminated via confirmation bias or the GE effect. The only possible data come from large population assessments. A mask protects against droplets, only, not viral particles. But wearing one is a social convention.
Viral particles are contained in droplets when they are expired. The finer the droplets the longer they hang in the air for others to breathe in. Studies have shown that masks affect this dispersal.
I don’t know where you get the ‘unlikely to make people believe they are safe so they can ignore the risks’ nonsense. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to convince seniors that the new Swedish mask mandate for public transit did not make public transit safe, and some of the people who did not believe me got covid and died after taking public transit into town when they had carefully avoided it before ‘wear masks on trams’ came out.
I failed these people.
I stand corrected. It seemed to me that masks would be a lot less likely to have that effect than a drug, but I cannot argue with your experience. Do you think there would have been fewer cases and fewer deaths in Sweden if nobody had worn masks and people had been more fearful?
‘People more fearful’? no. Elders more fearful, yes. When the mask mandate came out, every old person I interacted with, and I was part of the ‘delivers groceries and cleans your house and whatever’ for free, very badly wanted to believe that the mask mandate meant that public transit was safe. So they could travel to meet their friends, outdoors, at great distances, because they were lonely, lonely.
What I needed, badly, was a nice peer reviewed mask study that told the truth about how much protection masks gave people. Every one I read seems to indicate ‘if there is any effect, it is small’ — definitely not enough to make the trams safe. But we didn’t get those. The Danish study was the best we got, and there are problems with that study.
All I got was ‘yap yap, do what Democrats in the USA do because they are Democrats’ vs ‘yap yap the Democrats are all liars, so don’t believe them’. What about those of us, who by and large do not give a damn what the b- Americans are doing at any time?
I wanted an authoritative source for telling the old people to stay locked down, or, even better, come out because the trams are safe. Nobody wanted to give me that, it seems.
People more fearful’? no. Elders more fearful, yes. When the mask mandate came out, every old person I interacted with, and I was part of the ‘delivers groceries and cleans your house and whatever’ for free, very badly wanted to believe that the mask mandate meant that public transit was safe. So they could travel to meet their friends, outdoors, at great distances, because they were lonely, lonely.
What I needed, badly, was a nice peer reviewed mask study that told the truth about how much protection masks gave people. Every one I read seems to indicate ‘if there is any effect, it is small’ — definitely not enough to make the trams safe. But we didn’t get those. The Danish study was the best we got, and there are problems with that study.
All I got was ‘yap yap, do what Democrats in the USA do because they are Democrats’ vs ‘yap yap the Democrats are all liars, so don’t believe them’. What about those of us, who by and large do not give a damn what the b- Americans are doing at any time?
I wanted an authoritative source for telling the old people to stay locked down, or, even better, come out because the trams are safe. Nobody wanted to give me that, it seems.
I came to the conclusion that the absence of a ‘masks proven to be xxx effective study’ doesn’t mean that ‘nobody looked’ but rather that ‘nobody found any serious effectiveness’. Because if it had been found, we would have heard by now.
I think that it means that the effect is certainly not close to 100%, but it could still be significant (though it could also be quite small) , and that it is very hard to test with certainty. How do you set up a control group? How do you make sure that any change in case numbers in the community at large really is due to mask wearing, and not to any of the numerous other variables? See how hard it is to agree about the effectiveness of lockdowns. How do you control for correct use of masks or people not bothering some of the time, or changes in motrivation?
So, you are right that nobody found conclusive evidence of effectiveness, but there is still room for considerable effectiveness that could not have been picked up. The same could be said for Ivermectin, actually, though I think masks have a better starting position and are rather more likely to be worth something.
People forget. Mask wearing is to protect other people, not yourself. If everybody in a space wears a mask, keeps good hygiene and does not linger in the room, you have everyone protecting each other. If people cheat there is probably no protection from mask wearing.
Yes and the problem is that mask wearing is not to protect the wearer but other people. Very difficult to test in a trial. Engineering experiments show that it’s likely to be off some benefit, though.
There is no peer reviewed scientific study that show masks do anything to stop the spread of Covid. Sars2 is an airborne virus and thus any mask other than a fully sealed mask (that you see worn in films about viruses killing humanity) is very unlikely to have a significant impact on either the wearer or a third party.
The only peer reviewed study was done by a group of Danish Doctors and it showed mask wearing had no effect on the wearer.
If you can smell your fart when wearing a mask, it means the mask is not effective against anything.
Laura Pritchard
2 years ago
Gosh, the comments section gets off the subject quickly, doesn’t it? I found this article very illuminating particularly by illustrating the creep that is occurring around the question is acceptable risk. A dear friend of mine explained to me one day how his ice climbing in the Alps was much safer than someone else’s walking in the rolling English countryside because he and his colleagues were acutely well trained to judge risk accurately. He would encounter people who were thoroughly unprepared to be on the side of a mountain because they had wandered into the risk without any forethought. At the other end of the scale, one of his favourite walking spots was set to be ruined by the insistence that a hand rail had to be installed “just in case” someone got too close to the edge… partly because this spot had become hugely popular with families who then seemed to be incapable of trusting that their kids wouldn’t hurl themselves over the edge. Or worse, that, in their imaginations, that’s what their kids just might do one day in the future.
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
2 years ago
Is it no the case that the vaccinated are more likely to breed mutations?
That is exactly what I thought – for very obvious reasons.
Peta Seel
2 years ago
“the unvaccinated might breed mutations.” I must have missed something but I thought it was the vaccinated who were more likely to breed mutations as the virus looked for ways to break through the vaccine. That aside, this is a very good article on the mission creep of the risk averse and the ever-growing army of those who believe that every misfortune that befalls them must be “someone’s” fault.
I think you’re falling into teleology when you write ‘virus looks for ways to break through’.
They’re not sentient. Every time an organism reproduces it has to copy its genetic material, in this case RNA. Copying mistakes happen for no reason or intention. If the errors make any difference to contagion, or lethality, or vaccine avoidance, we notice them.
Most errors don’t confer any advantage and don’t get noticed by us at all.
Replication requires cell entry. If a vaccine fails to prevent cell entry the virus can make more copies of that success. Thus more spread of those successful ones. Delta has three spikes, the vaccine works on one.
That would fit with evolutionary theory, but empirically, the variants we are all worrying about now all emerged in places with essentially low vaccine uptake. (Kent before the UK vaccine drive went full bore, Brazil which even now has only about 35% fully vaccinated, South Africa and India (each with under 13% of the population fully vaccinated.)
Ken Moss
2 years ago
I take prescribed Ivermectin for my blepharitis but it’s a far cry from the veterinary dosage which is attracting a lot of attention.
I also take vitamins D, C and zinc, never had a flu jab or any other jab also have never worn a mask because I’m asthmatic . I’m way past retiring age but still and exercise every day. My immune system has taken care of me for a long time now and I have great faith in it.
Sadly I don’t feel the same towards this government and its MSM sycophants. It seems to me that governments around the world made a knee-j**k reaction and they now find themselves on merry-go-round going faster and faster and they can’t get off, but maybe vaccinating everyone might slow it down a bit. Or just maybe SAGE will conjure up some more psychological tricks to fool the gullible.
Total respect to those who are applying your strategy. Taking personal responsibility for your health by the way of exercise and some supplements rather than relying on government proposed “vaccines” which it now appears – do not control transmission, sometimes have side effects with women, boys or some compromised population and who knows how repeatedly vaccinated will fare in the future . So the best strategy is exercise and good health especially healthy lungs . After all it’s a respiratory illness.
And a low carb diet as COVID is also a vascular disease (ie blood clots) so keeping insulin low and weight normal is equally important.
Zorro Tomorrow
2 years ago
Define risk. Join the Army, get trained on and issued with a gun. Be sent to Iraq etc. It is reasonable to expect incoming gunfire but not the whole platoon to be hit.. Not all who get on rush hour public transport or drink in a busy bar catch Covid. To be hit by a stray cricket ball is sheer bad luck. Best to avoid the cracks in the pavement lest you attract angry bears.
David Yetter
2 years ago
Only one objection: “has gone mad” misses the mark. COVID safetism was born mad. Public policy throughout the entire Western world, save in Sweden, has for the past 19 months or so been predicated on the absurd premise that the only human goods are the prevention of infection with and death from COVID-19. The mere suggestion of a cost-benefit analysis for any anti-COVID measure is met with reactions more appropriate to someone proposing in all seriousness that we take up the suggestions in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”.
Liam O'Mahony
2 years ago
As a risk management consultant I feel a burning need to clarify a few points: firstly, the term “reasonable man” is actually defined in law, well, sort of: he is “the man on the upper deck of the London to Clapham omnibus”. That may seem idiotic at first glance but it is far from it. Such a man is not “elite” in any way but your ordinary Joe Soap (or he’d br in a taxi and not heading to Claphap: no offence to Clapham!). Secondly he is not downstairs which is protected from the rain, but upstairs (open to the elements at the time) so has some hope and positivity in his makeup: ie he not a coward or a doomsday merchant.. he is willing to take some risk for the benefit of fresh air!
So when calculating risk one must estimate the frequency factor (likelihood of contracting the virus) and also the probable outcome (mild or severe illness or death). That is but one risk. There is also the risk to others and again both factors apply. With 4 variables this is a complex risk because each individual has to examine his or her own probabilities AND those of (several?) others they are likely to encounter which in turn depends on a myriad of factors related to their home, family, extended family, work, travel, socialising, crowding (street, station, bus, train, pub, gig, stadiums) etc etc etc.. And wait, we must then factor in the degree of precaution they take as regards face covering, distancing even shouting, sneezing, laughing etc etc
In short it is quite impossible to come up with a defined set of measures to take or to impose. All we are left with is:
1. Awareness of the risks (minus anti vax lunacy) as far as the layman can be informed.
2. Commonsence: regarded (in law) as rare: common stupidity is far more prevalent!
3. Vigilance in not exposing ourselves (virus wise) to others and taking simple, routine hygiene precautions.
4. A degree of self denial in not socialising and attending pubs, restaurants, gigs and sporting events etc. (too often).
It is important to remember some issues that seem to be missed even in expert advice:
A. Whatever increased risk is posed under 4. above the risk is doubled if you do it twice as often! So a fegree of self denial is important.
B. Time is an ignored but critical aspect. The longer you engage in chatting to a virus carrier (or potential victim of your own infection) the greater is the risk of contracting or transmitting the virus. Time is critical!
C. Ventilation is equally critical so open air is much safer than indoors. Many premises are badly ventilated. Most think only of extraction forgetting that extracted air has to be replaced. If air intake isn’t controlled it may well come from low levels (eg under doors!) and so may be virus laden since droplets fall to the ground! Air intake is therefore more important than extraction!
Ok: I’ve gone on a bit: apoliogies!
Thanks for a reminder of this.
As a resident of Clapham I will make a point of seeking out those double deckers and sitting in satisfied happiness on the top deck (even if the risk is only the stairs) in the knowledge of the significance of being seated where I am.
Edward De Beukelaer
2 years ago
Quite right but the whole covid decisions debacle is much more sinister:
Have a look at this declaration: https://www.globalcovidsummit.org/
Jürg Gassmann
2 years ago
Thank you.
I am currently so traumatised by the Orwellian use of the word “safe” in public service announcement that I’ll need a safe space just to retain my sanity.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Those of us who travel on horseback, in close company, at speed over 4’6″ of hedge and fence, and have the now less than perfectly function bone structure to remind us, tend to despise obsession with safety and those who impose and cow tow to it, with a vengeance… However, they do provide splendid sport outside the season, as quarry to tease, bait, wind up and annoy…. the only fun bit of Covid and the papier mache spined corona phobes… Tally Ho!
Chris Wheatley
2 years ago
I believe that members of UnHerd are thinking too much about themselves and their ‘freedoms’. They should be thinking about protecting the Herd, which is what governments are supposed to do.
Nietzsche said that the UnHerd amounted to 0.1% of the population but today it is probably about 0.5% because of improved education. The idea should not be to give freedom to 0.5% and ignore 99.5%. The Herd need to know one thing: is it safe for everybody. If not, what should they do?
To compare this question to an obsession with H&S is just silly. I never wear a helmet when I cycle – how many people get seriously injured because they aren’t wearing a helmet? I actually know a person who was killed by a cricket ball while fielding at square leg. I still played cricket.
Covid is killing hundreds of thousands of people. It is not a game of intellect, it is real.
Political philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in his essay On Liberty, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others.”
The problem that lockdown brings is that whilst one group is supposedly being protected (sheltered from harm) by lockdown, another group is exposed to harm by the very same measures of the lockdown (depression, bankruptcy, lack of treatment of other ailments such as cancer etc etc) .
Given this, in order for a lockdown to be legally and morally acceptable the government must first provide demonstrable proof of the severity of the two harms – and only then chose the lesser of these two.
Since no attempt has been made to do this, I would strongly argue that lockdowns are both illegal and immoral. And just because the majority are in agreement with them in no way justifies them.
The fact that the government is hiding behind the opinions of the majority (who are is a state of mass hysteria and have been the victims of a concerted brainwashing campaign) only further demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of those currently in charge.
I have read John Stuart Mill. I am a scientist and have worked all over the world. How does this apply to billions of ordinary people who live for ‘Strictly’ or ‘Love Island’? Do they have to be sacrificed to prove the theory?
Maybe I agree with you and maybe not but that is my point. My point is that most people do not understand all of the (over)theorising that you see on this site. For thinkers, the UnHerd, there are literally thousands of theories to talk about and it is very interesting to do so BUT for most people you need to spell it out very clearly – don’t get close to anybody, don’t hug anybody, be miserable and live.
If you have faith that you will survive, if you don’t have a close family and nobody cares about you, if you are a loner by education (like me and probably you), then you can do as you want. If you are normal there is an interlocking of people who live for each other – of all ages, young and very old- and you can’t speak for them. You can’t talk about alternatives or freedom (whatever that means), you have to spell it out. It is no good having alternative strategies, vitamin D, vitamin B12, vaccination, etc. You have to have a strategy for EVERYBODY. This is what you are missing.
Well they could have explained to all those allegedly “stupid people” – not 95% maybe 30-50% (bell curve of IQ) that taking vit D, C, losing weight etc might help but no, they (at least here in Ireland) decided to (I exaggerate a bit for brevity) lock us ALL up for nearly on a year and close down businesses and schools for the longest time in Europe.
I have a husband and a wide circle of friends. People frequently get together and many people hug. No masks. No endless squirting of the chemical gel. We maybe hugged a little less at the height of the wave but that is about it. The general decision taken by the people I mix with is that they want to live the life given, rather than live masked and isolating. Especially as the disease appears to be endemic and we are likely all to get it.
And for a huge number getting infected is a one and done. If we only fully understood who will be terribly affected by, say, long covid. We know that being obese or diabetic or elderly creates great risk and they need to be wary until that herd immunity arrives.
You have no right to speak for other people. You are a reader so read any book by Russian authors post 1991. The ordinary people still believe that St*lin was a god and long to go back to unfreedom.
Surely you’re an example of a person judging what risks they are prepared to take. Why do you not want to extend the same self autonomy to us all. My own judgments are at variance with yours. I cycle and use a helmet on the road. I have rarely worn a mask during this pandemic. When I have it’s been to reassure others rather than from any fear myself. I don’t deny the danger from COVID-19 but having been trained in Nuclear, biological and chemical warfare in the 1960s I know that the protection offered by masks unless carefully fitted is minimal. Learning how to put on and remove protective clothing without contaminating yourself is difficult. We were tested with liquid sprays that were invisible except under uv light. Most of us even after extensive training showed traces on our skin. The loose cloth masks which people have worn in shops and then removed and put in their pockets are ridiculous. I don’t even believe the government have any faith in them or they would have conducted training and had some quality standards. It’s an exercise in public relations not public health.
You have illustrated well the difference between rationalism and reasonableness–although I am not certan that was your intent.For what it is worth, Nietzsche, too, was more rational than reasonable.
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
These are not good comparisons. Swimming behind a ‘No Swimming’ sign is easy to avoid. Unusually long-flying cricket balls are extremely rare, unpredictable, and only affect policy because they are so memorable. Catching COVID is neither rare nor easy to avoid, and the effecty on policy comes from the large and growing number of cases, not from ‘availability heuristics’.
Leaving it to the most risk-taking people in the population to strike a balance between their personal convenience and other people’s health is not a good policy.
Yes but leaving it to people who are on wages and can work remotely to strike a balance between their personal anxieties and other people’s unemployment + the destruction of small businesses isn’t working either.
Indeed. Which is why we need a reasoned, collective decision. That is what governments are for. Not the ‘remove the restrictions but advise people to follow them anyway and let everybody do whatever they want’ nonsense that the UK government is doing.
I think that most governments have given up on reason. It’s all about emotional manipulation. The sad thing is that ‘we are going to do X, because we think this is a reasonable thing to do, and here is why we think it is reasonable’ actually plays very well with the public, no matter what the spin doctors, nudgers, and committees to evaluate the re-election chances say.
You state that catching COVID is neither rare nor easy to avoid. An interesting statement fed more by fear mongering by the MSM and our governments than actual reality. First, it is not hard to avoid getting COVID. Just don’t go to crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces. That may not be 100% effective but it is highly effective. Second, for a viral infection that is supposed to be so commonplace, it is quite amazing that many of us will probably find that in their circle of acquaintances very few have actually come down with COVID. In terms of people I actually know directly (as opposed to a friend of a friend of a friend,…..) I only know of one family that had COVID (and interestingly they had nothing bad). And for the record I don’t live in the wilderness either.
With regard to vaccination I think it may be time for Governments and public health officials to take a step back. To claim that the vaccines are completely safe is clearly nonsense as the number of side effects and deaths post-vaccination reported in the US VAERS and UK Yellow book databases exceeds that of all other vaccines combined over the last 10 years. So while serious long-term (i.e. extending more than a few days) side effects and death post COVID vaccination are certainly rare, they are orders of magnitude more common than for any of the other standard vaccines that everybody gets. Perhaps would be wise to check people for long-term T and B cell immunity before vaccinating people willi-nilly. An expensive procedure but probably a wise one.
We have had this discussion already. You believe that COVID is not much of a danger and easy to avoid, that COVID vaccines are quite dangerous, and that Ivermectin is a proven cure. I disagree on all three points. No need to run this again.
You should not put words in my mouth. That is never a good way to argue and suggests that you have a very blinkered and closed view of things. A closed mind is a dangerous mind.
I never said COVID vaccines are quite dangerous. I simply stated the absolutely known fact that deaths and major side effects from the current crop of COVID vaccines is higher than that for all other common vaccines for the last 10 years combined. To deny that there are potential serious consequences (and unpredictable ones at that) from COVID vaccination is dishonest and simply equivalent to close one’s eyes and scream “see no evil, hear no evil”. That’s why getting the COVID vaccines should be an informed personal decision. I’ve been doubly vaccinated back in February but I won’t be rushing to get a booster shot.
Ass for Ivermectin I never said it was a proven cure. What I said is that it is a safe medicine when dosed appropriately for humans, that literally billions of doses of ivermectin have been administered since its introduction 35-40 years ago, and that therefore there is nothing to lose. That’s a critical point because the choice before one is sick enough to require hospitalization is to either do nothing and wait for one’s fate, or do something that is harmless but may work to some extent.
I also never said that COVID is not potentially dangerous and indeed fatal, especially if one is over 65 with co-morbidities. There is no denying that and COVID is not something to simply ignore, especially for those in the high-risk groups. But at the same time it is actually not that hard to avoid catching it or at least significantly reduce one’s chances of catching it by avoiding crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces. Why, because those spaces are the prime location for transmission. You’re not going to get it outdoors even if you transiently pass an infected walker, jogger or cyclist. You’re not going to get it unless you spend a significant amount of time indoors in very close proximity to an infected person. And that’s why if you ask most people, they can only name a very small number of people they actually know directly who’ve actually had COVID.
COVID is not much of a danger and easy to avoid, “it is actually not that hard to avoid catching it[…] and few people know anyone directly who has caught it.”
COVID vaccines are quite dangerous, “deaths and major side effects from the current crop of COVID vaccines is higher than that for all other common vaccines for the last 10 years combined”, so that “getting the COVID vaccines should be an informed personal decision”
I can’t see that it makes much difference which version you use.
On Ivermectin I admit that I have misrepresented you. You did not say that we should make Ivermectin available to everybody and encourage them to rely on it because we know it works (that was another debater), You said that we should make Ivermectin available to everybody and encourage them to rely on it even though we do not know if it works
I still do not think there is any need to run through the arguments again
I advocate Ivermectin be put in the drinking water. WTF? If you can be forced to Vax, why not be forced to take sheep de-wormer. It is safer and more effective in the off-lable studies I have seen….
I do not care for him much as he is a radical pro Vaccine advocate, and a firm masker – but I watch his stuff, and he has several on Ivermectin, but as Youtube is so anti – such, just talking of it means a great chance of being kicked off the site, or as many others who mention Ivermectin, having their advertising money stopped.
I believe that there may be unforeseen side effects from the vaccine. We don’t really know what’s in them. What if they adversely affect our immune systems so that we are unable to resist other strains of viruses? What if, in the long-term, they degenerate brain cells? What if they do cause structural cell damage?
There are too many ‘what-ifs’, and too many vested interests in this whole pandemic scheme. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-2020279585-A1
The things you mention are all possible. They are just quite unlikely. There have been enough vaccinations that short-term effects would have shown up by now. As for long-term effects 1) There have been other vaccines. For non-specific parts of the vaccines there will be data from those 2) for COVID-specific proteins, the amount and variety of proteins you get exposed to from a vaccine seem certain to be a lot less than what you would get from the actual disease. So your ‘what-ifs’ would also apply to getting the disease – in spades.
IFIK, no other mRna vaccines have ever been used on humans so we have no idea about long term effects. The vaccines do not include complete coverage compared to the disease nor do they produce an equivalent immune response. The vaccines may be a safer way to partial immunity but that jury is still out. But we don’t understand why some are so severely affected by the virus that getting infected would be risky.
I’ve been in South Africa among the variants since last year and have still managed to avoid it so far. So has my wife, two sons, daughter-in-law, three grand children of various ages and father-in-law who is over 90. None of our friends has been infected although the guy who runs the gym has a great aunt who caught it. None of us are vaccinated yet. Avoiding indoor crowds and social distancing in shops seems to work after all.
I think the latest is that you will eventually get it – and also the Vaxed will too…It is just endemic and inevitable.
Heggs Mleggs
2 years ago
It isn’t about what is best for “individuals and their children”. It’s about what is best for the most vulnerable in our society. This individualistic view is just frightening. There will never be a benefit that outweighs the risk of the deaths of thousands of vulnerable people.
Yeah great let’s jab children, for no other reason than to protect the elderly who have already had double/ triple shots of the same vaccine. Makes a load of sense.
My understanding is that children are being vaccinated to reduce transmission so as to protect the vulnerable who refuse to be vaccinated, thereby reducing hospital admissions and deaths. The justification to use children in this way is that they benefit from reduced disruption to their schooling.
I agree with Rasmus Fogh that the examples in the article are poor. I also think the science is inadequate. Academics compete rather than elucidate.
The idea of vaccinating children who are essentially at close to zero risk to protect the elderly, when there are known significant risks associated with vaccination of children is completely unethical, especially when those at risk can take necessary precautions to protect themselves (e.g. vaccination, wearing a N95 mask if one has to go into crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces, etc….).
Just last week a study was published in the US that found the risk of myocarditis following vaccination of 12-15 year old boys was 6 times greater than that following COVID infection. That’s a significant risk that one has to consider. Put it this way: if you’re child were vaccinated and developed myocarditis that significantly impacted their future (e.g. long recovery, possible premature death, etc….) I very much doubt that you would simply say that you and your child took one for the team!!!!! That’s what you have to bear in mind when issuing vaccine mandates and one -size fits all blanket approaches.
And incidentally, the same is true regarding vaccination of those who’ve previously been infected and recovered. Again a recent study out of Israel indicates that the level of protection against future infection resulting from prior infection is over 10 times greater than that resulting from vaccination. So why bother vaccinating the previously infected with potential untoward risk.
And lastly, as regards vaccination, one really needs to take a pause and look at what’s going on in Israel, Iceland and for that matter the UK. How well have the vaccines really performed? How long are they effective for? Given that they are leaky does widespread vaccination, as opposed to focussed vaccination of those at high risk, actually promote the generation of escape variants? Is mass vaccination in the middle of a pandemic for a disease where the fatality is small a sensible thing to do, or does it do more harm than good – e.g. the case of Marek’s disease and vaccination in chickens where vaccination actually made things worse rather than better. These are all things that one has to consider rather than simply doubling down on an approach that may be fatally flawed.
No, unfortunately the data suggests that the most vulnerable will not have enough protection from the vaccine alone. It is about everyone doing the right thing to protect them, so keeping social distancing and masks and encouraging all who can to get vaccinated.
Not to Covid though. Some children in the USA have died after getting the vaccine. Only already vulnerable children have died after Covid, for them the risk/ benefit analysis is clearly in favour of vaccination. For most people under 50 or so, it isn’t.
I am in my late 80s and so “very vulnerable” but have never wanted the government to put my welfare before that of my children and grandchildren. This elderly point of view has never been investigated but I believe it has more support than the government and press ever lead us to believe.
They did such a study in Sweden. The elderly were the most supportive of the relaxed measures ‘for the sake of the younger people’. Meanwhile the younger people were most likely to think that the restrictions did not go far enough, ‘for the sake of the oldest people’. https://www.thelocal.se/20200511/coronavirus-survey-what-do-swedes-really-think-of-the-countrys-approach/
This says to me that the selfishness and untrammelled individualism Mary Harrington writes about today is not as bad a problem in Sweden. But I think there actually is a lot of this other-people-first mentality going around, for all that it does not make headlines.
I feel the same, I had the vaccine as I had hoped to travel but I will not be having a booster. I think it is completely unethical to give this vaccine to children while long term results won’t be known for another couple of years. At my age, 79, it doesn’t matter too much but not for my grandchildren. I have never worn a mask due to severe respiratory problems on the advice of my consultant who said it would be dangerous for me to do so. It’s a strange virus, my neighbour caught it at the very beginning and was really ill. Oddly his wife and two adult children did not get it. Yet in the past two weeks I personally know of eight people you got it, all fully vaccinated, some with AZ and some with Pfizer. I have just carried on as normal and have had no problems so far.
Isn’t that exactly why people like Gupta et al. have proposed focussed protection of those at high risk while leaving the rest of society free to go about their daily business.
Not at all. Just avoid poorly ventilated crowded indoor places such as bars, pubs and nightclubs; avoid large indoor gatherings. And perhaps use a N95 mask if one has to venture into such places.
First of all, let me say what a fantastically well thought and well written piece. Excellent!
What frightens me most about (the reaction to) Covid is that whilst it is obviously something to be avoided if one can, it is not serious enough to have warranted the reactions seen by some countries. In the UK we were told that lockdown and other measures were being put in place only so as to ‘flatten the curve and take the strain off the NHS’. Yet here we are 18 months later and the hysteria over a very common type of virus is still in full force.
The fact that we are sacrificing the economy and the futures of our children for a virus whose average age of victim is over 81 years old (higher than the average life expectancy) is utterly ridiculous.
And now, (according to this article) people are blaming the mutations on those who have not been vaccinated…..utter poppycock….Indeed, there is a body of thought that suggests it is the vaccines that are causing the mutations as the virus struggles to survive. However, since the vaccines seem not to stop the risk of infection but just to stop the worst of the symptoms, it appears if that too could be incorrect.
Covid 19 or SARS2 is a new virus, and the human defense (immune) system will take time to combat it, but combat it, it will—–as it has always done with this type of virus throughout the history of humanity.
The over reaction to this virus is very suspicious indeed.
Your comment is 100% on the mark
I am chipping in here because of what I see as the dangers of revisionism which filled me with a horror “as yet unseen” when I read the words, slipped in the above comment, about what we were told in the UK about the justification and reasons for lockdown. To my mind the reaction to Covid was pretty much universal globally and really no country got it better than any other and I believe that the idea that in UK is was all an effort to “flatten the curve” for the benefit of the NHS is like insanity upon insanity undermining my very experience. Was it really only a horrible dream in the UK?…. It was never just about logistics! In the UK it was primarily, upfront and overwhelmingly about death rates just like other countries and it was an insanity which would not have existed if it were all about the logistics of NHS coping. Just like the anti-Brexit movement all those hordes including the great and good who were taking to media and stating that we could not possibly survive outside the EU will now be back-peddling furiously with many possibly saying “of course when I talked about the impossibility of survival outside of the EU I only meant that such a scenario would emerge where we did not get a deal or that when they talked about it they only meant that we would be up to 2% GDP points better off if we stayed which they would point out is a considerable sum!”
With regard to the article itself. To me the key thing is about the difference between acute or personal choice matters (like the taking of a vaccine) and the chronic and deeply significant aspect of mask wearing and lockdown and there is a constellation of difference between the two. On the matter of vaccination about which there have been many comments I see it as a matter which, while requiring vigilance, is really transient. Also, given my views about transience, I see the focus on vaccines in the comments as an extension of my concern about revisionism as other aspects are far more important. Mask wearing and lockdown, is something which people have willingly, even gleefully, embraced and that for me is a concern for the very broad evolution of humanity. The attitude behind mask wearing and lockdown exhibited by humanity is major and, effectively, permanent as an attitude of humanity towards its place in nature where humanity is not only living as to date as if it were apart from nature (and massively abusing nature) but is now viewing nature as positively hostile and something to be held at arm’s length each day and every day.
I place the “heurism question of reasonableness” referred to in the article also as part of the transient aspects similar to vaccination. I place it as an imposed phenomenon even as the reality portrayed in Orwell’s 1984 is an imposed reality by Big Brother. In being an imposed phenomenon, even if unexpressed in Orwell’s book, there is a hope in the reader’s own mind that one day reality or truth will shine through and Big Brother will be thrown off. There is no such relatively immediate hope in relation to mask wearing and lockdown which, being so happily and readily embraced, is a chosen evolution by humanity itself and not imposed and so is the future.
Where is this sudden headache coming from ??
laughing!
Many nations now want to roll out a system of QR codes for the vaccinated. Anyone not vaccinated will be unable to enter restaurants, bars, or any other place large groups of people mingle. I’m hearing from my vaccinated friends in South Australia that every time they enter a store, the information is sent to a central database. I also read recently of a British woman who posted an unpopular opinion on social media had her bank accounts frozen.
What we are witnessing is the rapid build-up of a surveillance state infrastructure. This, more than anything else, is why I am so reluctant to take the vaccine. What depresses me more than anything is that it seems that the majority of people are embracing this system and shaming those who resist it. The vitriol and hatred of the vaccinated against the unvaccinated has taken me by complete surprise. In my idealism I always believed that we in the West had outgrown this medieval mindset long ago.
This has already been done in Chile. You theoretically cannot enter a bar or restaurant unless you have your QR verifiable Covid passport.
What does the insertion of “theoretically” mean there, exactly?
Has also been already implemented in Ireland. First for indoor dining and pubs, now extended to cinemas (which were already open without it), theatre and other indoor entertainment. Ostensibly to “protect the unvaccinated” ( that’s what they actually said), bit it’s really about coercion and Ireland has the highest rate of vaccination in EU (after Malta).
So, the second-highest then?
I went the easy way. First, lucky me…..I managed to spend 3 months in Sweden at the start of the pandemic…..and another 10 weeks in Austria in October 2020 until January 2021, escaping the absolutely mad french lockdown.
As to the vaccine, the sooner the better…..I knew there would be some sorts of health pass and having my nose bored into 5 times before being vaccinated, convinced me that having a bleeding nose wasn’t game on compared to the jab.
The world has gone mad, this is an undisputed fact …..however, I don’t see why I should join the loopy farm party pulling my hair because of a vaccine. Just get the jab and get on with life…..might I remind you that this commodity is rather short in its lifespan ?
A very reasonable article, I would say.
Hey Unherd, how about commissioning this barrister to write an article about legal remedies available to people who are subject not just to cancellation but who lose their livelihoods due to progressive activists and their claims of racism or some other kind of –ism?
I would tell him to go a bit more for the brevity of the main argument, and stick in some other side issues, to give it a bit more kick. He could mention the, say, Ivermectin thing – what with ‘Reasonable care’ being mentioned.
Dr Campbell or Bret Weinstein on the Meta-study on Ivermectin are good places to begin on youtube. YET do a search on Ivermectin and what comes is the most blatant Algorithm Tampering ever! Hundreds and hundreds of anti Ivermectin links – a very great of them outright lies (Hospitals and poison control centers overloaded with Ivermectin poisoning – dozens of these will be there, but all Fake News – yet allowed to stand) – Wile Not One link to Ivermectin being useful! Evin though a billion pills have been used for covid in developing countries – and hundreds of studied also in developing world as NOT ONE Ivermectin study has been done in the West! (meta-study shows 62% -86% improvement)
The theory being that it works on covid – and the Vaccine was released under emergency license on the basis there was NO Medicine which did work. Thus if Ivermectin did work the vaccine license would become invalid. It is the $$$$$$$$$$$
I have my horse de-wormer Ivermectin in the bathroom, and my zinc, D3, C, and Querctin on the table……
Or maybe there are hundreds of anti ivermectin links because the vast majority of medical professionals believe that using it to treat Covid is nonsense. I find it strange that a man who proudly states he won’t take a medically approved vaccine to ward off the effects of Covid, whilst at the same time taking an unproven substance to try and get the same result
What Sanford clearly stated was that the search results are being rigged to NOT reflect the true story. There are thousands of doctors and scientists around the world getting PROVEN success with Ivermectin, and hundreds of studies showing its undoubted efficacy. Alas, the results are getting repressed due to the obvious reasons that Sanford says and many people naivrly beleive. Whatever the search results throw up. The fact that you have bought into the lies that Ivermectin doesn’t work just shows how successful their efforts have been at covering up the truth. For anyone willing to do even a little research will quickly find out that what the MSM and search engines are telling you about Ivermectin is definitely nothing like the truth, but when one lookd at where the bulk of their ad revenues come from it isn’t hard to understand why.
You boys love a conspiracy theory don’t you!
The Wuhan lab leak and vaccine passports are two examples of ‘conspiracy theories’. Oh dear.
The Wuhan leak does look like a cover up from the Chinese, with large parts of the medical profession scared of losing large parts of their funding if they challenged it. To me that’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s simply the danger of allowing institutions becoming too reliant on money from bad foreign governments.
Likewise the vaccine passports aren’t a conspiracy theory either, they’re simply a terrible piece of legislation from governments who feel like they have to be seen to be doing something to control the virus.
If ivermectin worked as you claim, don’t you think one of these billion dollar multinationals would have found a use for it somehow and sold it up as a wonder cure? Instead of a few lads on some backwater YouTube channel claiming to have seen through the deep state?
You completely missed my point. Until recently, the Wuhan Lab Leak and Vaccine Passports were dismissed as conspiracy theories.
As for Ivermectin, I’m afraid you are simply very naive. There is no money to be made from it, so it has to be discredited.
“don’t you think one of these billion dollar multinationals” – The vaccines are quite rewarding. No reward for an off-patent generic.
Which bit is a conspiracy? Vaccine passports? Vaccinating children? Booster jabs? Wuhan lab leak? Mandatory vaccines?
At what point do people who use the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ realise that researching and questioning are just normal things to do. Doing such things in times gone by would have been the intelligent thing to do. It is what all thinking people did, and is how mankind has progressed.
Now, if you dare to question the single narrative that is given to us by the WHO/CDC/NIH, you get called a conspiracy theorist, which is very odd.
Be scared of the conspiracy.. wooo wooo wooo…))))
Care to provide a link to these thousands of clinical tests that prove ivermectin works to prevent Covid?
Thousands of doctors, not thousands of clinical studies, rather thousands of patients treated successfully.
Here you can see 64 of these studies: https://ivmmeta.com/
Because of the behaviour of governments, large organisations and businesses, corporate media, big tech, compromised scientists and the like, it is incumbent on the intelligent and the curious to be sceptics. The stories like the Wuhan lab leak and vaccine passports only serve to underline this.
Seriously, can you believe organisations like this? The FDA recently tweeted “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” This is about a medicine that is safe and has had 4 billion plus doses administered to humans.
Then the recent bollocks that LIT corporate and social media to the extent that Rolling Stone (the most inflammatory of the bunch) posted this headline (then edited it): “Gunsh*t Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says.” In fact many of the MSM ran this story without checking details and the incurious just lapped it up.
There are many substances that have been administered to humans and animals, ketamine for instance, that doesn’t mean that they all work on different virus’
I think it’s a case of the poison is in the dose. In the case of both ivermectin and ketamine it’s the dose that makes the difference.
Doses certainly make a difference. In the case of Ivermectin however you have to take industrial amounts to make you keel over. I exaggerate slightly but this is a drug that is safer than aspirin, that has been handed out like smarties to hundreds of millions of people. Their usage was hardly carefully monitored. To date after 40 years there are about 20 deaths recorded – ref. WHO.
I’m not referring to it being poisonous, as you say you need to mess up the doses or take the wrong kind for it to do damage. However just because it’s not killing people doesn’t mean it is an effective treatment.
Whilst I’m not exactly trusting of the morals of big companies, I’d be willing to bet if it was any use they’d have found a way to market it as such. A potential Covid suppressant would be worth billions after all, I find it hard to believe that they’ve missed out while some crockpot in the dark reaches of the internet has discovered it personally
It’s out of patent so there is very little money to be made by drug companies. They have just spent billions creating new drugs, they wish to recoup that outlay by selling them. If IVM was proven to be effective treatment for Covid then this would be problematic for them.
That does not prove anything of course, and based on the available evidence, the ‘vaccine’ is currently most people’s best option.
So in 5 years time when trillions has been made from vaccines there will be a study on a ‘new’ drug called Iverschmectin and the drug companies will happily sell it to us as a great new cure for Covid.
You don’t have to wait that long. Merck has already funded the study.
https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/03/coronavirus_DRIVE_molnupiravir/index.html
It’s something they had lying around — developed as a broad spectrum anti-viral for influenza, and equine encephalitis … horse medicine.
The US government funded the study. They gave Merck (and Ridgeback) $1.2 billion to develop a new anti viral.
My mistake, I didn’t know that.
What happened to the flu case numbers? Did the seasonal flu all of a sudden just up and disappear because we have found a cure for it?
What about the overall death numbers from all causes… did more people die in 2020, then did in 2019, than did in 2018, than did in 2017?
Billy Bob, surely know that huge quantities of meds are used off label.
it is not unproven. There are dozens of everyday substances that easily kill viruses. Lots of work still to do but vs. various viruses already effective. https[colon]//pubmed[dot]ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32533071/
https[colon]//www[dot]ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/
…and many more links
I agree with you. Taking these home remedies is meant to show that you are an original thinker, that nobody can push you around, that you can understand science (whatever that means). But this can’t translate to a population of millions. Why don’t I put a voodoo doll under the pillow at night to ward off evil spirits?
For countries, for millions of people, you have to follow medical advice, even if it turns out to be wrong when history is written in 50 years from now. Quack remedies based on a paper somebody has read on the Internet just don’t answer the question.
It’s bizarre, it’s like the opposite end of the spectrum to comments section on sites such as the guardian. Instead of the purity spiral of constantly trying to prove how woke they are by ignoring basic human biology and parroting divisive rhetoric such as the critical race theory, the other end want to prove their differences to those people by ignoring basic science such as that we can see by the reduced hospital numbers following vaccination, and so desperate to stand out that they’ll label anybody who defends the vaccines as sheep while blindly following any dissenting voice they find on the internet
Exactly. It is all about showing how clever you are. My neighbour was telling me recently that he has read a paper about vaccination which points out a lot of negatives. So he won’t get vaccinated. His choice I suppose but it is like saying “I’ve read something you haven’t read, so I’m cleverer than you are”.
you describe exactly what ‘the vaccinated’ are doing.
“…ignoring basic science such as that we can see by the reduced hospital numbers following vaccination…”
Science? And you may be surprised, I do not know what numbers you are looking at but you seem not to notice the current numbers?
Compare the peak of hospitalisations and deaths pre vaccination (which was during lockdown) to now when society is fully open and large numbers of double jabbed. To me that shows vaccines work
What are they hospitalized for?
The Guardian readers tow the government, big tech, big organisation, corporate media line. There is a word for unquestioning people like them.
“But this can’t translate to a population of millions.“…it can and it has. Do keep up.
Could you rewrite that in English, please?
lijkely not….I just jam out my rants nd hit post…..
LOL
Can we afford the Fees?
So the unvaccinated breed mutations? I clicked on the link and was taken to the Guardian – no surprises there then and zero risk of any other position from The Guardian. As both vaccinated and unvaccinated can catch and spread the disease, why would it only be the unvaccinated that are driving variants?
Earlier in the year it was posited that mass vaccination with a narrowly focused, non sterilising vaccine in a pandemic would drive ever more infectious variants to develop as the virus is driven to evolve. In this scenario you see the vaccinated inadvertently being the problem and it certainly makes sense to me.
What about Unherd producing an article discussing variant risk factors?
Just last week, Brett Weinstein in conversation with Joe Rogan said the same thing: that in his opinion the spread of variants was undoubtably linked to the fact of the vaccine being ‘leaky’, therefore exerting concentrated evolutionary pressure on the virus.
I have to say, I’m still not convinced that this is necessarily the case. But it is at very least a sensible enough hypothesis which, in the absence of stronger evidence to the contrary, should give strident vaccine advocates pause for concern.
Exactly. The scientific process of rigorous testing, discussion and criticism of hypotheses has seemingly been suspended to only follow one narrative.
At issue: was Delta the product of an inferior vaccine trial in India or was Mu the product of the Chinese inferior vaccine in Peru? There are reputable scientists that are quite worried about these experiments.
I understand the argument to be that partially vaccinating a country risks variants arising that have immunity to the vaccine. Once you get past the herd immunity threshold, the risk drops
It’s not immediately obvious to me that either the vaccinated or unvaccinated per se drive the generation of new variants. The argument by Brett Weinstein regarding increased evolutionary pressure as a result of a leaky vaccine is certainly correct. However, recall that the UK alpha variant arose before vaccination, and the Indian delta variant arose in a country where vaccination levels were negligible at the time (and are still negligible). Also recall that the Indians got over the delta variant pretty quickly (i.e. the delta wave was short-lived with rapid rise and rapid fall). All of which suggests that the virus will mutate no matter what simply as a result of replication errors, as RNA viruses are wont to do. The real question then is whether in the coming months variants are generated that are largely resistant to antibodies generated by vaccination. Those variants are clearly likely to be driven by infection of the vaccinated rather than the immunologically naive unvaccinated.
As for ivermectin, the suppression of its appropriate use in the US and UK is to my mind nothing short of criminal. In the appropriate dose it is completely safe, and therefore worth giving a shot if infected, whether one is vaccinated or unvaccinated. Whether ivermectin really works is another matter but together with the appropriate antibiotic (doxycycline or azithromycin) to prevent secondary pneumonia, zinc, vit C and vit D, it sure can’t do any harm.
A major force in the production of new variants is ‘people whose immune system is compromised’, particularly if you decide to treat them by giving them plasma from people who have recovered from covid.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03291-y
explained for a popular audience here:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-may-arise-in-people-with-compromised-immune-systems/
So while the unvaccinated may have been more at risk for the severe version of the disease that might make the doctors at the hospital stick plasma in you — the bulk of people with bad immune systems are the ones who are also doubly vaccinated, because they were prioritised for precisely this reason.
At some point (who is measuring this?) you can expect that doubly or triply vaccinated immuno-compromised people are the people most at risk for severe illness. The people whose immune systems are so broken that a vaccine doesn’t invoke much of a response are going to be at high risk for severe disease no matter how many times you jab them.
How the asymptomatic long carriers of the disease, whose immune systems never clear the thing and who don’t know, because they aren’t sick factor into the ‘where do variants come from’ equation is still unknown. We don’t even know how many of those people there are, for instance.
Yes, I do realize that mutations happen regardless of vaccination – I was simply making a point in reference to the statement that the unvaccinated were driving variants.
As for Ivermectin, I agree with you and don’t know if we will ever know the truth. There is too much money involved and too many people have skin in the game. To me it has been shocking to watch and learn the extent of corruption in many governments, industries, organisations, media houses and businesses. This even after the past decade and a half in a large corporate (stuffed to the rafters with psychopaths, narcissists and other creatures with various pathologies)!
I did read that India introduced Ivermectin during the surge with very good results in many states – the most obvious outlier being Tamil Nadu where the governor (MK Stalin – yes) banned Ivermectin and introduced Remdesivir. The cases soared.
I continue to take it on and off during epidemic waves and it nailed a recent cold I had in 24 hours. Or maybe it was simply a 24 hour cold, which is certainly novel to me!
Anecdote should never replace properly conducted trials. Just because you read something once doesn’t make it true. How come there wasn’t a conspiracy against dexamethasone which is cheap and off patent? There is no conspiracy – if ivermectin is effective it’s at too low a level to have been detected in trials so far, which means that any effect is likely to be non-existent or trivial.
There was no hoo ha about dexamethasone because it is a treatment of symptoms in hospital and not an anti viral. And there are plenty of Ivermectin trials. Sheesh.
I have to apologise – I have been doing some more reading and it seems that ivermectin is quite effective and safe in normal doses. I have been too trusting. However, I’m afraid that I don’t buy your distinction between the two drugs as an explanation as to why the WHO has taken against ivermectin. Is it because some of the trials have been conducted in the Third World?
I think it’s time we stopped funding the WHO.
Dexamethasone is used widely for a variety of different conditions. It is not a prophylactic and is not an anti-viral (which is the Ivermectin claim), therefore it is no threat to the vaccines.
But really neither is ivermectin. You only use it when your are already infected
How come there wasn’t a conspiracy against dexamethasone which is cheap and off patent?
Because dexamethasone isn’t a threat to kill the emergency use authorizations. Dexamethasone doesn’t claim to reduce viral load, it is merely a drug to treat the symptoms.
Ivermectin is not completely safe in any dose. No drug that works is ever completely safe. Please read this: https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/ivermectin-treat-covid-19-coronavirus-3535912/
Come on. Be a little realistic. For sure nothing is 100% safe. Even ice cream when too much is ingested! Ivermectin is a safe as tylenol, paracetamol and advil, all available OTC.
See my newer reply…
‘Life’ is not completely safe.
Neither is covid
The unvaccinated are not necessarily immunologically naive, remember 80% of people are asymptomatic.
Where did you get the ‘80% are asymptomatic’ figure? I thought this was one of the still-unknowns.
Brilliant! Fantastic, interesting piece. More from this author, please. One of the best on Unherd.
Agree! Excellent article.
yes! Nothing beats the reason.
So the dreaded ‘availability heuristic’ has become our yardstick of acceptable behavior….
This at a time the MSM, Government, Pharma/Medical Industrial Complex and their lackeys NHS, PHE, CDC, FDA, and the Social Media/Tech industry – the teaching professions and the hard Left Unions which manage them….., are bombarding us with fake news, repressed Scientific advice and news, hysterical advice told with horror stories to back them up, Government issue Fas *ist level lockdowns, – Police harass park bench sitters in London, Military troops harass beach users in Australia, Indian Police beat the public with batons…And meanwhile the Central banks create so much debt, and slow productivity, that the global economy Must fail into a disaster not seen since WWII.
Biden’s recent mass vaccine, totalitarian, campaign has proven this all is not about health, as he mandates hundreds of millions be vaccinated, even against their will – Although as many as a hundred million have natural immunity, which is superior to vax antigen derived immuinty. They refuse to allow this superior, natural, immunity over the artificial! This cannot be about health.
What it is is Pure Collusion. the ‘availability heuristic’ is not real, it is completely manufactured. Yet as the writer says – legally it stands, it is the guide we are legally judged by ““You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee” and the fake news, lying Government, and sleazy self interested Medical, are all warping what is ‘reasonable’. It is no longer Possible for the truth to be told in this new-normal.
Something is afoot, the Global Elites must be supposed to exist in this unanimity of repression from every source in society. So lets turn to the World Economic Forum (WEF), and Klaus Schwab, for some reassurance it will work out.
” “History shows that epidemics have been the great resetter of countries’ economy and social fabric. Why should it be different with COVID-19?”
― Klaus Schwab, Covid-19, The Great Reset
People are not thoughtful or reasonable (or kind, nice, decent etc) en mass (quite often as individuals too) sad to say, and what might be rational will always fall to that which is generally believed to be true my the many (what is fashionable and easy to understand – presumably because others think it to…. (See Anatole France and a million foolish things), this evolves, and the courts take note of this. However instead of screaming at a mad word (a dispiriting task), why not treat truth propagation in the same way as untruth, morally distasteful yes, but, if it can be made as popular as believing bollocks, people may believe instead in something that is not bollocks. Dismal I know, but people always adore those magic beans, and once they buy them, they are the only way to go. Probably won’t work, idiots are idiots and very attached to it at that.
The Black Death not only reset the medieval economy it also laid the foundations for the modern western world through the reformation. Reset is unavoidable. We need to make it our Reset.
As long as the reset isn’t the one proposed by the WEF. Otherwise we’ll all end up eating lab produced food & owning nothing. Though, apparently we’ll be happy. Personally, I think it’s more likely we’ll see the great backlash. History shows us that when people’s freedom is threatened long enough, they always rise up.
One can only hope.
Haha, you missed a trick there by not capitalising the Great Backlash. I do like the idea and I was thinking about all the stuff that is retrospectively believed to have occurred in society after the Black Death. It might be an interesting thought experiment to try to come up with the more unusual results that might emerge from the current situation. And it would be wonderful to find some contemporary analysis from during the initial attack of the plague up see what people thought was happening and might happen in the future. I’m picturing long essays about Ye Grate Reseteth.
I thought that was due to the resultant labour shortage. The reformation came 150+ years later.
These days they’re all believed to be part of the same thread. Rather wonderful cause and effect. Might be interesting to try to work out if the same journey might have occurred without the Black Death. A friend of mine wrote a great short story in school using the butterfly effect about someone who went back in time and stopped the fire of London.
Ah, interesting.
I think we’ve crossed a line somewhere in this “pandemic”. Something isn’t quite right in peoples’ heads anymore. This thought bears some developing and a lot of polishing, but it has a lot to do with the death of public Christianity in the west.
That may seem a strange connection to make, but remember, Christianity is a whole philosophy of life, not just a belief in the divinity of Jesus. It’s a modus vivendi and a reference against which you measure what you experience. Some years ago, Peter Hitchens opined that public Christianity died in the mud of Flanders, and since then, we in the west have all been warming ourselves on the embers of a fire to which we have contributed nothing and which has slowly been going out. I suspect the WHO’s declaration of a pandemic will, with hindsight, be the moment when history will declare the last spark of the fire finally went out.
Read the Unherd article on Satanism.
I believe you are correct. Something is not quite right anymore. I think we are reverting to a pre-Christian mindset.
We’re seeing very similar issues in the financial services sector, where the government seems intent on protecting the populace from itself while damaging private enterprise.
The left-wing parties are simply continuing their philosophy of paying people to do nothing (and protecting them from evil money-makers); presumably, the right-wing governments are applying their paternalistic principles (and protecting its core voters to the cost of all others). In neither case are hard-working taxpayers being considered.
Two questions;
Is there empirical evidence that mask wearing cuts the risk of covid?
Is there empirical evidence that hand washing cuts the risk of covid?
Obviously I’m aware that hand washing is a good thing from a general hygiene aspect, but has it anything to do with a respiratory virus?
I believe there is some evidence that mask wearing helps against COVID – some recent results from villages in Bangla Desh showed a 9% reduction in cases, as mask wearing improved from 14% to 42% of the population. It is admittedly not overwhelming, and that for handwashing is thinner, AFAIK. The point is that for both measures there are strong theoretical reasons to think that it ought to help (unlike a random drug, let us say). For handwashing I believe it came form experience with another virus.But then, it is hard to get definite proof – and as you know there is no proper trial to prove that putting on a parachute makes it less dangerous to jump out of aeroplanes. But then it is a relatively cheap measure and (again unlike some random drug) unlikely to a make people believe they are so safe they can ignore the risks.
But Fogh, I read that mask study and it has one Very weird part–
There is NO difference in mask/unmasked for people under 50 years old. The only documented difference of covid spread in masking/not masking is in over 50 ages – that must mean it is very flawed
I saw this in The Economist, who are reasonably reliable as journalists go. It is not overwhelming (I did say “some evidence”). There could be an explanation for what you see, but to be honest I would rather accept that the evidence for mask wearing is by no means conclusive (as I hope was the original message) and not spend the time to check through the details.
If the study is using cases are the measure, how can it mean anything as cases do not mean anything.
Every mask study is contaminated via confirmation bias or the GE effect. The only possible data come from large population assessments. A mask protects against droplets, only, not viral particles. But wearing one is a social convention.
Sounds reasonable. What is the GE effect?
Viral particles are contained in droplets when they are expired. The finer the droplets the longer they hang in the air for others to breathe in. Studies have shown that masks affect this dispersal.
And virtue signaling.
I don’t know where you get the ‘unlikely to make people believe they are safe so they can ignore the risks’ nonsense. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to convince seniors that the new Swedish mask mandate for public transit did not make public transit safe, and some of the people who did not believe me got covid and died after taking public transit into town when they had carefully avoided it before ‘wear masks on trams’ came out.
I failed these people.
I stand corrected. It seemed to me that masks would be a lot less likely to have that effect than a drug, but I cannot argue with your experience. Do you think there would have been fewer cases and fewer deaths in Sweden if nobody had worn masks and people had been more fearful?
‘People more fearful’? no. Elders more fearful, yes. When the mask mandate came out, every old person I interacted with, and I was part of the ‘delivers groceries and cleans your house and whatever’ for free, very badly wanted to believe that the mask mandate meant that public transit was safe. So they could travel to meet their friends, outdoors, at great distances, because they were lonely, lonely.
What I needed, badly, was a nice peer reviewed mask study that told the truth about how much protection masks gave people. Every one I read seems to indicate ‘if there is any effect, it is small’ — definitely not enough to make the trams safe. But we didn’t get those. The Danish study was the best we got, and there are problems with that study.
All I got was ‘yap yap, do what Democrats in the USA do because they are Democrats’ vs ‘yap yap the Democrats are all liars, so don’t believe them’. What about those of us, who by and large do not give a damn what the b- Americans are doing at any time?
I wanted an authoritative source for telling the old people to stay locked down, or, even better, come out because the trams are safe. Nobody wanted to give me that, it seems.
People more fearful’? no. Elders more fearful, yes. When the mask mandate came out, every old person I interacted with, and I was part of the ‘delivers groceries and cleans your house and whatever’ for free, very badly wanted to believe that the mask mandate meant that public transit was safe. So they could travel to meet their friends, outdoors, at great distances, because they were lonely, lonely.
What I needed, badly, was a nice peer reviewed mask study that told the truth about how much protection masks gave people. Every one I read seems to indicate ‘if there is any effect, it is small’ — definitely not enough to make the trams safe. But we didn’t get those. The Danish study was the best we got, and there are problems with that study.
All I got was ‘yap yap, do what Democrats in the USA do because they are Democrats’ vs ‘yap yap the Democrats are all liars, so don’t believe them’. What about those of us, who by and large do not give a damn what the b- Americans are doing at any time?
I wanted an authoritative source for telling the old people to stay locked down, or, even better, come out because the trams are safe. Nobody wanted to give me that, it seems.
(the b-word got me moderated. this may come out twice.)
Thanks for telling us. Worth thinking about. Big upvote.
PS Goes to show that false hope and false information is dangerous. Also for masks. I still favour them, but I shall be reminded of their limitations.
I came to the conclusion that the absence of a ‘masks proven to be xxx effective study’ doesn’t mean that ‘nobody looked’ but rather that ‘nobody found any serious effectiveness’. Because if it had been found, we would have heard by now.
I think that it means that the effect is certainly not close to 100%, but it could still be significant (though it could also be quite small) , and that it is very hard to test with certainty. How do you set up a control group? How do you make sure that any change in case numbers in the community at large really is due to mask wearing, and not to any of the numerous other variables? See how hard it is to agree about the effectiveness of lockdowns. How do you control for correct use of masks or people not bothering some of the time, or changes in motrivation?
So, you are right that nobody found conclusive evidence of effectiveness, but there is still room for considerable effectiveness that could not have been picked up. The same could be said for Ivermectin, actually, though I think masks have a better starting position and are rather more likely to be worth something.
People forget. Mask wearing is to protect other people, not yourself. If everybody in a space wears a mask, keeps good hygiene and does not linger in the room, you have everyone protecting each other. If people cheat there is probably no protection from mask wearing.
Yes and the problem is that mask wearing is not to protect the wearer but other people. Very difficult to test in a trial. Engineering experiments show that it’s likely to be off some benefit, though.
There is no peer reviewed scientific study that show masks do anything to stop the spread of Covid. Sars2 is an airborne virus and thus any mask other than a fully sealed mask (that you see worn in films about viruses killing humanity) is very unlikely to have a significant impact on either the wearer or a third party.
The only peer reviewed study was done by a group of Danish Doctors and it showed mask wearing had no effect on the wearer.
If you can smell your fart when wearing a mask, it means the mask is not effective against anything.
Gosh, the comments section gets off the subject quickly, doesn’t it? I found this article very illuminating particularly by illustrating the creep that is occurring around the question is acceptable risk. A dear friend of mine explained to me one day how his ice climbing in the Alps was much safer than someone else’s walking in the rolling English countryside because he and his colleagues were acutely well trained to judge risk accurately. He would encounter people who were thoroughly unprepared to be on the side of a mountain because they had wandered into the risk without any forethought. At the other end of the scale, one of his favourite walking spots was set to be ruined by the insistence that a hand rail had to be installed “just in case” someone got too close to the edge… partly because this spot had become hugely popular with families who then seemed to be incapable of trusting that their kids wouldn’t hurl themselves over the edge. Or worse, that, in their imaginations, that’s what their kids just might do one day in the future.
Is it no the case that the vaccinated are more likely to breed mutations?
That is exactly what I thought – for very obvious reasons.
“the unvaccinated might breed mutations.”
I must have missed something but I thought it was the vaccinated who were more likely to breed mutations as the virus looked for ways to break through the vaccine.
That aside, this is a very good article on the mission creep of the risk averse and the ever-growing army of those who believe that every misfortune that befalls them must be “someone’s” fault.
I think you’re falling into teleology when you write ‘virus looks for ways to break through’.
They’re not sentient. Every time an organism reproduces it has to copy its genetic material, in this case RNA. Copying mistakes happen for no reason or intention. If the errors make any difference to contagion, or lethality, or vaccine avoidance, we notice them.
Most errors don’t confer any advantage and don’t get noticed by us at all.
Replication requires cell entry. If a vaccine fails to prevent cell entry the virus can make more copies of that success. Thus more spread of those successful ones. Delta has three spikes, the vaccine works on one.
That would fit with evolutionary theory, but empirically, the variants we are all worrying about now all emerged in places with essentially low vaccine uptake. (Kent before the UK vaccine drive went full bore, Brazil which even now has only about 35% fully vaccinated, South Africa and India (each with under 13% of the population fully vaccinated.)
I take prescribed Ivermectin for my blepharitis but it’s a far cry from the veterinary dosage which is attracting a lot of attention.
I also take vitamins D, C and zinc, never had a flu jab or any other jab also have never worn a mask because I’m asthmatic . I’m way past retiring age but still and exercise every day. My immune system has taken care of me for a long time now and I have great faith in it.
Sadly I don’t feel the same towards this government and its MSM sycophants. It seems to me that governments around the world made a knee-j**k reaction and they now find themselves on merry-go-round going faster and faster and they can’t get off, but maybe vaccinating everyone might slow it down a bit. Or just maybe SAGE will conjure up some more psychological tricks to fool the gullible.
Total respect to those who are applying your strategy. Taking personal responsibility for your health by the way of exercise and some supplements rather than relying on government proposed “vaccines” which it now appears – do not control transmission, sometimes have side effects with women, boys or some compromised population and who knows how repeatedly vaccinated will fare in the future . So the best strategy is exercise and good health especially healthy lungs . After all it’s a respiratory illness.
And a low carb diet as COVID is also a vascular disease (ie blood clots) so keeping insulin low and weight normal is equally important.
Define risk. Join the Army, get trained on and issued with a gun. Be sent to Iraq etc. It is reasonable to expect incoming gunfire but not the whole platoon to be hit.. Not all who get on rush hour public transport or drink in a busy bar catch Covid. To be hit by a stray cricket ball is sheer bad luck. Best to avoid the cracks in the pavement lest you attract angry bears.
Only one objection: “has gone mad” misses the mark. COVID safetism was born mad. Public policy throughout the entire Western world, save in Sweden, has for the past 19 months or so been predicated on the absurd premise that the only human goods are the prevention of infection with and death from COVID-19. The mere suggestion of a cost-benefit analysis for any anti-COVID measure is met with reactions more appropriate to someone proposing in all seriousness that we take up the suggestions in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”.
As a risk management consultant I feel a burning need to clarify a few points: firstly, the term “reasonable man” is actually defined in law, well, sort of: he is “the man on the upper deck of the London to Clapham omnibus”. That may seem idiotic at first glance but it is far from it. Such a man is not “elite” in any way but your ordinary Joe Soap (or he’d br in a taxi and not heading to Claphap: no offence to Clapham!). Secondly he is not downstairs which is protected from the rain, but upstairs (open to the elements at the time) so has some hope and positivity in his makeup: ie he not a coward or a doomsday merchant.. he is willing to take some risk for the benefit of fresh air!
So when calculating risk one must estimate the frequency factor (likelihood of contracting the virus) and also the probable outcome (mild or severe illness or death). That is but one risk. There is also the risk to others and again both factors apply. With 4 variables this is a complex risk because each individual has to examine his or her own probabilities AND those of (several?) others they are likely to encounter which in turn depends on a myriad of factors related to their home, family, extended family, work, travel, socialising, crowding (street, station, bus, train, pub, gig, stadiums) etc etc etc.. And wait, we must then factor in the degree of precaution they take as regards face covering, distancing even shouting, sneezing, laughing etc etc
In short it is quite impossible to come up with a defined set of measures to take or to impose. All we are left with is:
1. Awareness of the risks (minus anti vax lunacy) as far as the layman can be informed.
2. Commonsence: regarded (in law) as rare: common stupidity is far more prevalent!
3. Vigilance in not exposing ourselves (virus wise) to others and taking simple, routine hygiene precautions.
4. A degree of self denial in not socialising and attending pubs, restaurants, gigs and sporting events etc. (too often).
It is important to remember some issues that seem to be missed even in expert advice:
A. Whatever increased risk is posed under 4. above the risk is doubled if you do it twice as often! So a fegree of self denial is important.
B. Time is an ignored but critical aspect. The longer you engage in chatting to a virus carrier (or potential victim of your own infection) the greater is the risk of contracting or transmitting the virus. Time is critical!
C. Ventilation is equally critical so open air is much safer than indoors. Many premises are badly ventilated. Most think only of extraction forgetting that extracted air has to be replaced. If air intake isn’t controlled it may well come from low levels (eg under doors!) and so may be virus laden since droplets fall to the ground! Air intake is therefore more important than extraction!
Ok: I’ve gone on a bit: apoliogies!
Thanks for a reminder of this.
Thanks for a reminder of this.
As a resident of Clapham I will make a point of seeking out those double deckers and sitting in satisfied happiness on the top deck (even if the risk is only the stairs) in the knowledge of the significance of being seated where I am.
Quite right but the whole covid decisions debacle is much more sinister:
Have a look at this declaration: https://www.globalcovidsummit.org/
Thank you.
I am currently so traumatised by the Orwellian use of the word “safe” in public service announcement that I’ll need a safe space just to retain my sanity.
Those of us who travel on horseback, in close company, at speed over 4’6″ of hedge and fence, and have the now less than perfectly function bone structure to remind us, tend to despise obsession with safety and those who impose and cow tow to it, with a vengeance… However, they do provide splendid sport outside the season, as quarry to tease, bait, wind up and annoy…. the only fun bit of Covid and the papier mache spined corona phobes… Tally Ho!
I believe that members of UnHerd are thinking too much about themselves and their ‘freedoms’. They should be thinking about protecting the Herd, which is what governments are supposed to do.
Nietzsche said that the UnHerd amounted to 0.1% of the population but today it is probably about 0.5% because of improved education. The idea should not be to give freedom to 0.5% and ignore 99.5%. The Herd need to know one thing: is it safe for everybody. If not, what should they do?
To compare this question to an obsession with H&S is just silly. I never wear a helmet when I cycle – how many people get seriously injured because they aren’t wearing a helmet? I actually know a person who was killed by a cricket ball while fielding at square leg. I still played cricket.
Covid is killing hundreds of thousands of people. It is not a game of intellect, it is real.
Political philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in his essay On Liberty, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others.”
The problem that lockdown brings is that whilst one group is supposedly being protected (sheltered from harm) by lockdown, another group is exposed to harm by the very same measures of the lockdown (depression, bankruptcy, lack of treatment of other ailments such as cancer etc etc) .
Given this, in order for a lockdown to be legally and morally acceptable the government must first provide demonstrable proof of the severity of the two harms – and only then chose the lesser of these two.
Since no attempt has been made to do this, I would strongly argue that lockdowns are both illegal and immoral. And just because the majority are in agreement with them in no way justifies them.
The fact that the government is hiding behind the opinions of the majority (who are is a state of mass hysteria and have been the victims of a concerted brainwashing campaign) only further demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of those currently in charge.
yes, well put
And also – the harms must be very severe in order for any rights to be suppressed.
I have read John Stuart Mill. I am a scientist and have worked all over the world. How does this apply to billions of ordinary people who live for ‘Strictly’ or ‘Love Island’? Do they have to be sacrificed to prove the theory?
Freedom is more important than small risk, by far!
But the real flaw in your argument is that there seems to be NO difference in places which locked down and those which did not!
It is all a scam!
Actually there is a difference. Sweden’s IFR is 1.2%, well below most of the rest of Europe and elsewhere.
Maybe I agree with you and maybe not but that is my point. My point is that most people do not understand all of the (over)theorising that you see on this site. For thinkers, the UnHerd, there are literally thousands of theories to talk about and it is very interesting to do so BUT for most people you need to spell it out very clearly – don’t get close to anybody, don’t hug anybody, be miserable and live.
If you have faith that you will survive, if you don’t have a close family and nobody cares about you, if you are a loner by education (like me and probably you), then you can do as you want. If you are normal there is an interlocking of people who live for each other – of all ages, young and very old- and you can’t speak for them. You can’t talk about alternatives or freedom (whatever that means), you have to spell it out. It is no good having alternative strategies, vitamin D, vitamin B12, vaccination, etc. You have to have a strategy for EVERYBODY. This is what you are missing.
Well they could have explained to all those allegedly “stupid people” – not 95% maybe 30-50% (bell curve of IQ) that taking vit D, C, losing weight etc might help but no, they (at least here in Ireland) decided to (I exaggerate a bit for brevity) lock us ALL up for nearly on a year and close down businesses and schools for the longest time in Europe.
Those ‘stupid’ people are the people. That is our country and our world, not a few pseudo-thinkers who spend their leisure time on sites like this.
I have a husband and a wide circle of friends. People frequently get together and many people hug. No masks. No endless squirting of the chemical gel. We maybe hugged a little less at the height of the wave but that is about it. The general decision taken by the people I mix with is that they want to live the life given, rather than live masked and isolating. Especially as the disease appears to be endemic and we are likely all to get it.
And for a huge number getting infected is a one and done. If we only fully understood who will be terribly affected by, say, long covid. We know that being obese or diabetic or elderly creates great risk and they need to be wary until that herd immunity arrives.
You have no right to speak for other people. You are a reader so read any book by Russian authors post 1991. The ordinary people still believe that St*lin was a god and long to go back to unfreedom.
Surely you’re an example of a person judging what risks they are prepared to take. Why do you not want to extend the same self autonomy to us all. My own judgments are at variance with yours. I cycle and use a helmet on the road. I have rarely worn a mask during this pandemic. When I have it’s been to reassure others rather than from any fear myself. I don’t deny the danger from COVID-19 but having been trained in Nuclear, biological and chemical warfare in the 1960s I know that the protection offered by masks unless carefully fitted is minimal. Learning how to put on and remove protective clothing without contaminating yourself is difficult. We were tested with liquid sprays that were invisible except under uv light. Most of us even after extensive training showed traces on our skin. The loose cloth masks which people have worn in shops and then removed and put in their pockets are ridiculous. I don’t even believe the government have any faith in them or they would have conducted training and had some quality standards. It’s an exercise in public relations not public health.
Yes, I understand you because I have an international reputation as a scientist. But how does this apply to billions of ordinary people?
You have illustrated well the difference between rationalism and reasonableness–although I am not certan that was your intent.For what it is worth, Nietzsche, too, was more rational than reasonable.
These are not good comparisons. Swimming behind a ‘No Swimming’ sign is easy to avoid. Unusually long-flying cricket balls are extremely rare, unpredictable, and only affect policy because they are so memorable. Catching COVID is neither rare nor easy to avoid, and the effecty on policy comes from the large and growing number of cases, not from ‘availability heuristics’.
Leaving it to the most risk-taking people in the population to strike a balance between their personal convenience and other people’s health is not a good policy.
Yes but leaving it to people who are on wages and can work remotely to strike a balance between their personal anxieties and other people’s unemployment + the destruction of small businesses isn’t working either.
Indeed. Which is why we need a reasoned, collective decision. That is what governments are for. Not the ‘remove the restrictions but advise people to follow them anyway and let everybody do whatever they want’ nonsense that the UK government is doing.
I think that most governments have given up on reason. It’s all about emotional manipulation. The sad thing is that ‘we are going to do X, because we think this is a reasonable thing to do, and here is why we think it is reasonable’ actually plays very well with the public, no matter what the spin doctors, nudgers, and committees to evaluate the re-election chances say.
You seem to yearn to live in a totalitarian state. Maybe a move to Cuba or Venezuela would be a good idea for you.
You state that catching COVID is neither rare nor easy to avoid. An interesting statement fed more by fear mongering by the MSM and our governments than actual reality. First, it is not hard to avoid getting COVID. Just don’t go to crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces. That may not be 100% effective but it is highly effective. Second, for a viral infection that is supposed to be so commonplace, it is quite amazing that many of us will probably find that in their circle of acquaintances very few have actually come down with COVID. In terms of people I actually know directly (as opposed to a friend of a friend of a friend,…..) I only know of one family that had COVID (and interestingly they had nothing bad). And for the record I don’t live in the wilderness either.
With regard to vaccination I think it may be time for Governments and public health officials to take a step back. To claim that the vaccines are completely safe is clearly nonsense as the number of side effects and deaths post-vaccination reported in the US VAERS and UK Yellow book databases exceeds that of all other vaccines combined over the last 10 years. So while serious long-term (i.e. extending more than a few days) side effects and death post COVID vaccination are certainly rare, they are orders of magnitude more common than for any of the other standard vaccines that everybody gets. Perhaps would be wise to check people for long-term T and B cell immunity before vaccinating people willi-nilly. An expensive procedure but probably a wise one.
We have had this discussion already. You believe that COVID is not much of a danger and easy to avoid, that COVID vaccines are quite dangerous, and that Ivermectin is a proven cure. I disagree on all three points. No need to run this again.
You should not put words in my mouth. That is never a good way to argue and suggests that you have a very blinkered and closed view of things. A closed mind is a dangerous mind.
I never said COVID vaccines are quite dangerous. I simply stated the absolutely known fact that deaths and major side effects from the current crop of COVID vaccines is higher than that for all other common vaccines for the last 10 years combined. To deny that there are potential serious consequences (and unpredictable ones at that) from COVID vaccination is dishonest and simply equivalent to close one’s eyes and scream “see no evil, hear no evil”. That’s why getting the COVID vaccines should be an informed personal decision. I’ve been doubly vaccinated back in February but I won’t be rushing to get a booster shot.
Ass for Ivermectin I never said it was a proven cure. What I said is that it is a safe medicine when dosed appropriately for humans, that literally billions of doses of ivermectin have been administered since its introduction 35-40 years ago, and that therefore there is nothing to lose. That’s a critical point because the choice before one is sick enough to require hospitalization is to either do nothing and wait for one’s fate, or do something that is harmless but may work to some extent.
I also never said that COVID is not potentially dangerous and indeed fatal, especially if one is over 65 with co-morbidities. There is no denying that and COVID is not something to simply ignore, especially for those in the high-risk groups. But at the same time it is actually not that hard to avoid catching it or at least significantly reduce one’s chances of catching it by avoiding crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces. Why, because those spaces are the prime location for transmission. You’re not going to get it outdoors even if you transiently pass an infected walker, jogger or cyclist. You’re not going to get it unless you spend a significant amount of time indoors in very close proximity to an infected person. And that’s why if you ask most people, they can only name a very small number of people they actually know directly who’ve actually had COVID.
OK, you are saying that
COVID is not much of a danger and easy to avoid,“it is actually not that hard to avoid catching it[…] and few people know anyone directly who has caught it.”COVID vaccines are quite dangerous, “deaths and major side effects from the current crop of COVID vaccines is higher than that for all other common vaccines for the last 10 years combined”, so that “getting the COVID vaccines should be an informed personal decision”I can’t see that it makes much difference which version you use.
On Ivermectin I admit that I have misrepresented you. You did not say that we should make Ivermectin available to everybody and encourage them to rely on it because we know it works (that was another debater), You said that we should make Ivermectin available to everybody and encourage them to rely on it even though we do not know if it works
I still do not think there is any need to run through the arguments again
I advocate Ivermectin be put in the drinking water. WTF? If you can be forced to Vax, why not be forced to take sheep de-wormer. It is safer and more effective in the off-lable studies I have seen….
So you do say that Ivermectin is a proven cure? I disagree.
I am joking about putting it in the water….
but here is Dr Campbell (who is actually a nurse, but wide experience, and the world’s favorite covid youtuber) on the big Ivermectin study
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j7am9kjMrk
I do not care for him much as he is a radical pro Vaccine advocate, and a firm masker – but I watch his stuff, and he has several on Ivermectin, but as Youtube is so anti – such, just talking of it means a great chance of being kicked off the site, or as many others who mention Ivermectin, having their advertising money stopped.
Game Set & Match Sir! I ain’t going to bother with the tripe that’s supposed to be a response
I believe that there may be unforeseen side effects from the vaccine. We don’t really know what’s in them. What if they adversely affect our immune systems so that we are unable to resist other strains of viruses? What if, in the long-term, they degenerate brain cells? What if they do cause structural cell damage?
There are too many ‘what-ifs’, and too many vested interests in this whole pandemic scheme.
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-2020279585-A1
The things you mention are all possible. They are just quite unlikely. There have been enough vaccinations that short-term effects would have shown up by now. As for long-term effects 1) There have been other vaccines. For non-specific parts of the vaccines there will be data from those 2) for COVID-specific proteins, the amount and variety of proteins you get exposed to from a vaccine seem certain to be a lot less than what you would get from the actual disease. So your ‘what-ifs’ would also apply to getting the disease – in spades.
IFIK, no other mRna vaccines have ever been used on humans so we have no idea about long term effects. The vaccines do not include complete coverage compared to the disease nor do they produce an equivalent immune response. The vaccines may be a safer way to partial immunity but that jury is still out. But we don’t understand why some are so severely affected by the virus that getting infected would be risky.
I agree. This is an example of being too clever for the real world.
I’ve been in South Africa among the variants since last year and have still managed to avoid it so far. So has my wife, two sons, daughter-in-law, three grand children of various ages and father-in-law who is over 90. None of our friends has been infected although the guy who runs the gym has a great aunt who caught it. None of us are vaccinated yet. Avoiding indoor crowds and social distancing in shops seems to work after all.
I think the latest is that you will eventually get it – and also the Vaxed will too…It is just endemic and inevitable.
It isn’t about what is best for “individuals and their children”. It’s about what is best for the most vulnerable in our society. This individualistic view is just frightening. There will never be a benefit that outweighs the risk of the deaths of thousands of vulnerable people.
Yeah great let’s jab children, for no other reason than to protect the elderly who have already had double/ triple shots of the same vaccine. Makes a load of sense.
And bearing in mind that the children very seldom every get this disease seriously and the elderly have few life years left!
The JCVI did not recommend vaccinating children, but said it might be worth considering to avoid disruption to schools
The best thing you can do to avoid disruption to schools is to end the testing regime…
My understanding is that children are being vaccinated to reduce transmission so as to protect the vulnerable who refuse to be vaccinated, thereby reducing hospital admissions and deaths. The justification to use children in this way is that they benefit from reduced disruption to their schooling.
I agree with Rasmus Fogh that the examples in the article are poor. I also think the science is inadequate. Academics compete rather than elucidate.
The idea of vaccinating children who are essentially at close to zero risk to protect the elderly, when there are known significant risks associated with vaccination of children is completely unethical, especially when those at risk can take necessary precautions to protect themselves (e.g. vaccination, wearing a N95 mask if one has to go into crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces, etc….).
Just last week a study was published in the US that found the risk of myocarditis following vaccination of 12-15 year old boys was 6 times greater than that following COVID infection. That’s a significant risk that one has to consider. Put it this way: if you’re child were vaccinated and developed myocarditis that significantly impacted their future (e.g. long recovery, possible premature death, etc….) I very much doubt that you would simply say that you and your child took one for the team!!!!! That’s what you have to bear in mind when issuing vaccine mandates and one -size fits all blanket approaches.
And incidentally, the same is true regarding vaccination of those who’ve previously been infected and recovered. Again a recent study out of Israel indicates that the level of protection against future infection resulting from prior infection is over 10 times greater than that resulting from vaccination. So why bother vaccinating the previously infected with potential untoward risk.
And lastly, as regards vaccination, one really needs to take a pause and look at what’s going on in Israel, Iceland and for that matter the UK. How well have the vaccines really performed? How long are they effective for? Given that they are leaky does widespread vaccination, as opposed to focussed vaccination of those at high risk, actually promote the generation of escape variants? Is mass vaccination in the middle of a pandemic for a disease where the fatality is small a sensible thing to do, or does it do more harm than good – e.g. the case of Marek’s disease and vaccination in chickens where vaccination actually made things worse rather than better. These are all things that one has to consider rather than simply doubling down on an approach that may be fatally flawed.
Did I say vaccinate children? No, I didn’t. If you’re asking, I think we need to address vaccine inquality globally before we do that.
Surely if the most vulnerable were assisted to get vaccinated the risk to them would be reduced irrespective whether others chose not to be.
And what do you say to a most vulnerable person who believed, rightly or wrong, it was in their own best interest not to be vaccinated?
No, unfortunately the data suggests that the most vulnerable will not have enough protection from the vaccine alone. It is about everyone doing the right thing to protect them, so keeping social distancing and masks and encouraging all who can to get vaccinated.
Children are normally understood to be some of the most vulnerable in our society.
Not to Covid though. Some children in the USA have died after getting the vaccine. Only already vulnerable children have died after Covid, for them the risk/ benefit analysis is clearly in favour of vaccination. For most people under 50 or so, it isn’t.
That is generally true, but in the case of COVID children, fortunately, are actually the least vulnerable
Not with covid. Which is what we’re talking about.
I am in my late 80s and so “very vulnerable” but have never wanted the government to put my welfare before that of my children and grandchildren. This elderly point of view has never been investigated but I believe it has more support than the government and press ever lead us to believe.
They did such a study in Sweden. The elderly were the most supportive of the relaxed measures ‘for the sake of the younger people’. Meanwhile the younger people were most likely to think that the restrictions did not go far enough, ‘for the sake of the oldest people’.
https://www.thelocal.se/20200511/coronavirus-survey-what-do-swedes-really-think-of-the-countrys-approach/
This says to me that the selfishness and untrammelled individualism Mary Harrington writes about today is not as bad a problem in Sweden. But I think there actually is a lot of this other-people-first mentality going around, for all that it does not make headlines.
I feel the same, I had the vaccine as I had hoped to travel but I will not be having a booster. I think it is completely unethical to give this vaccine to children while long term results won’t be known for another couple of years. At my age, 79, it doesn’t matter too much but not for my grandchildren. I have never worn a mask due to severe respiratory problems on the advice of my consultant who said it would be dangerous for me to do so. It’s a strange virus, my neighbour caught it at the very beginning and was really ill. Oddly his wife and two adult children did not get it. Yet in the past two weeks I personally know of eight people you got it, all fully vaccinated, some with AZ and some with Pfizer. I have just carried on as normal and have had no problems so far.
Isn’t that exactly why people like Gupta et al. have proposed focussed protection of those at high risk while leaving the rest of society free to go about their daily business.
Great Barrington Declaration …. The last voice of reason in this last 18 months.
And roundly condemned but where we find ourselves anyway.
How would we do that? Insist vulnerable people just stay in their houses forever?
Not at all. Just avoid poorly ventilated crowded indoor places such as bars, pubs and nightclubs; avoid large indoor gatherings. And perhaps use a N95 mask if one has to venture into such places.