Come on Toby – what Right policies pushed the Vax mandates? Who really forced the universal uptake of the Vaccine, closing schools, shutting small business, locking people in their houses, printing money to make the elites even more filthy richer, the ‘passports’, the work from home, the lockdowns, the lies and censoring and closing social media accounts? The Left The Progressive Left most of All. You own this mess, your Guardian sorts. Notice the Blue States (Democrats) and how different they are from the Republican states – Note the Marxist Teachers Unions in every land shut the schools and destroyed the young peoples education although the young do not suffer from covid.
Everyone Must watch Senator Ron Johnson (Republican) two days ago held a Senate Meeting with the world’s top scientists who are brave enough to tell the real story of this whole Covid Monstrosity Reaction brought by the Left. Toby – why has every voice against the lockdown and mandates and vax been from the Right? (excepting Peirs Corbyn) And every voice pushing it been from the hard, or Progressive, Left?
Take 4 1/2 hours and watch the US Senate (all is now on the official US Senate Records – this is official). It is fascinating, you wish they had another 10 hours to get deeper into it all….
Yes Galeti. What has been so bizarre for me is how my previous social-democratic leanings have been consistently pushed to the right over the last two years. To have Nigel Farage speaking sense is very troubling LOL! . I am now not clear where my political home is anymore. I wonder what restructuring of the political landscape is underway.
There is a huge difference between pseudo-progressives (including broad swaths of the media, NGO, academic, technocratic class as well as the titanic corporations which dominate the economy) and the actual left which remembers that our movement is concerned with inequality and is rooted in the working poor.
Indeed. It was illuminating that for all the faults, it was the Corbynites who supported the Tory rebels in the vote on further restrictions before Christmas.
Ann Roberts
2 years ago
What I find surprising is the suppression of information by the BBC and the mainstream media on the protests that are taking place across the globe against Vaccine Mandates. The Canadian Truckers campaign has not been mentioned on the BBC as far as I can see. I wonder when this alternative movement that is worldwide will breakthrough into the mainstream. Justin Trudeau called the truckers ‘unacceptable’ and now people are creating personal hashtags that begin #unacceptable. Feels like the tide is turning:)
Last edited 2 years ago by Ann Roberts
J Bryant
2 years ago
Thank you for this essay. I believe we should all be periodically reminded of the effects of vaccine mandates, and the one-size-fits-all response to the pandemic, on the world’s poorest countries.
For me, the most troubling thing mentioned in this article is the requirement imposed on poor African countries to take out loans to pay for universal vaccination. If the West is so utterly determined to impose its strategy for virus control on poor nations then it should at least pay for the vaccines.
Global three letter organisations have become so powerful that they dictate how things are going to be. Poorer nations either comply or they have to go sit on the naughty step for a few years. There wishes and democratic viewpoint are no longer respected. They will do what the three letter organisation suggests or they will be made to suffer.
And if any political ideology is to blame f r this it is the left, who seem to have taken over every organisation in the world from schools to NGOs to the civil service.
And not just Africa. I live in Sri Lanka where there is a huge foreign exchange and debt crisis (engendered by an incompetent government and blamed on Covid, naturally) but where tourists are encouraged to get and pay for boosters while the locals, who are entitled to them for free, face a shortage. It’s a mad world, for sure.
But shouldn’t we be respectful of the differences in cultures? :/
Susan James
2 years ago
In general a good essay but ” A focused protection approach might have geared all efforts towards reaching the highest possible vaccination coverage in people aged 60+ as quickly as possible — including, as a last resort, age-specific mandates (unnecessary in practice because people in this age group, in general, are more than happy to get vaccinated).”
Mandates should never, ever be used for health interventions regardless of whether the majority of a particular target for those mandates has no issue with the intervention. In relation to covid19, the risk of death for a woman in her early sixties with no underlying conditions is one in one thousand, according to the Qcovid risk calculator. I suspect that the risk is still overestimated but in any event that’s a risk some are happy to take, and should be allowed to take. It will cost the state far less if I die of any given respiratory virus than if the state pays tens of thousands of pounds for health interventions that prolong my life until I end up at an advanced age, with no friends or relatives, suffering from dementia in a nursing “home,” many years later. That will release money to pay for health care for younger people, reduce the burden on the health and care systems, and indeed on the state pension. That does not prevent other people seeking whatever health interventions are offered by the healthcare system to prolong their own lives.
The right to refuse medical treatment exists for good reasons, and in fact is a central tenet for those who wish to promote euthanasia – a focus of heated debate currently which I find sits extremely uncomfortably with the simultaneous insistence that no one must die of a particular disease. The suggestion that mandates should be used for any section of society, age-specific or otherwise is utterly abhorrent.
“It will cost the state far less if I die of any given …” Good point. Those whom I know who chose to take the advice and stop smoking 40/50 years ago are now costing the State a fortune in health care and generous pensions. Those who continued to smoke are long gone having paid loads more high taxes on ciggies: good job ‘stop smoking’ was not mandated in the ’70’s!
I agree with your reasoning with the caveat that should you take the decision to be unprotected and catch Covid, you should survive or die ‘naturally’ without taking up an intensive care bed to do it (freeing it up for a younger patient) and saving £thousands in care
David D'Andrea
2 years ago
It’s also a generational injustice. I could rewrite a passage thus: ‘ The Western boomer’s comforting canard, that “No one’s safe until everyone’s safe”, is shown really to mean that “Until I feel safe, I will continue to destroy the livelihoods and health outcomes of younger generations”.’
Hendrik Mentz
2 years ago
This article’s (current) headline The Left-wing case against vaccine mandates illustrates to a T what Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying predicted in their DarkHorse Podcast Clip titled What happens next with the public health tyrants (from Livestream #112) | ‘Covid narrative collapse on elites’ >> https://odysee.com/@DarkHorsePodcastClips:b/what-happens-next-with-the-public-health:a
“To whom do lions cast their gentle looks? Not to the beast that would usurp their den. The smallest worm will turn being trodden on, And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.””
The Hard Left, the Progressives, have done their wickedest totalitarian moves on the world – forcing the lockdowns, the universal Vax mandates, the squandering of $$ Trillions, the taking of all freedoms and rights, the Trotsky Teaching Unions closing the schools and Universities destroying a generation of young – who do not suffer from covid anyway – to be economically set back for life, and lost their social growth and pleasure and health…
And now their utter perfidy is exposed, and the vax is shown to be a monstrous campaign which brought 10 harms for every one good – which has bankrupted the world – now they are claiming it was not them! Well the ‘worm has turned’ for being tread on, and now the Third world is aligned with the Western Right in condemning the Progressive Left and its mandates – the Right are finally convincing everyone of what the horrors the Left forced on the world with their lockdowns, money printing, and VACCINE.
Typical Guardian hacks like the above now pretend this all was not their doing…. But it was. The lies, the censoring, the Social Media, MSM banning any content against the Official, Left, one. The forbidding of the thing which works – Early Treatment with available drugs, because if medicine was allowed to cure covid it would cause vax hesitancy – so hundreds of thousands must die to keep the project fear pushing lockdowns and the Vaccine as it is the tool of the Lefty cause to bring the Great Reset.
Who resisted? Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas – the Right. Who pushed it? the Left – New York, California…. The Left did this, they need to own it, not try to weasel out….. and the reckoning is due….
Andrew McDonald
2 years ago
‘Most important of all though, it must be driven by what communities need and want, and not what globalised technocrats determine is good for them.’
What communities need is unlikely to be the same as what communities want; and nobody, least of all the capital-L Left (whatever that is) is going to allow ‘communities’ to decide on their own needs. That will be decided for them by the usual random coalition of incompetent politicians and unsustainable but efficient market operators.
Alex Stonor
2 years ago
I believe that millions of children & babies in developing countries have forgone the usual delivery of vaccines (mostly sterilising) that protect them against diseases like measles, small pox and polio, because the focus has shifted to rolling out covid vaccinations.
Malcolm Knott
2 years ago
The clue is in the second paragraph. Vaccines are bad because the drug companies make money from them.
Storm B
2 years ago
Weaponized compassion. Core to Marx et al. And it’s why the left so easily fell in with this narrative of jab or job, get the shot or eat sh!t.
Dan Croitoru
2 years ago
Each and every progressive piece should come with the disclaimer “Place the vomit bowl close”
Warren T
2 years ago
I also don’t understand the premise that vax hoarding is taking place in rich countries, to the detriment of poor African countries, yet young people in African countries are being beaten in order to force the vax on them?
Martin Smith
2 years ago
These vaccines only give short term protection against severe disease. Infection and transmission continue a pace as we have seen recently. Only high risk groups really benefit. 2 shots are followed a few weeks later by a 3rd, and then a few weeks again and a 4th. How many boosters do the ‘compulsory’ proponents propose? Even if 10, a person thus jabbed will still be officially ‘unvaxxed’ after a few months at most, just the same as someone who has never had a single dose but who in the meantime might have lost job, house and family. And all for a virus that is no danger to the vast majority. Even many of those at higher risk might do better to mitigate their lifestyles and improve their immune systems permanently.
Last edited 2 years ago by Martin Smith
ralph bell
2 years ago
Great article and so refreshing to hear so much sense from which ever side of political divide, although many on the right are just as selfish and paranoid as the left.
Deborah H
2 years ago
Look out for the definition of health to be changed soon – “ the WHO’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.
Warren T
2 years ago
I question who is really forcing these mandates on the young people of African countries. Are these countries independent states or are they still under colonial rule with Dutch and English slave masters forcing them to take the jab?
In addition, what health risk does an older, wealthy, white widow living in Oxfordshire have because a young farm hand in Rwanda is not vaxxed?
Six degrees of Bacon, plus an Omicron R>4.5 maybe??
Zorro Tomorrow
2 years ago
When will the left liberal progressives admit that forcing the colonial administrations out of Africa too soon caused all the mayhem? Their leaders, educated at the worst marxist universities, Oxbridge, taking faux democracy back home only to be replaced with dictators, warlords and the corrupt.
trevor fitzgerald
2 years ago
Didn’t the Left/Democrats make Covid the single issue of the Biden-Trump presidentials? You sow the wind you reap the whirlwind?
James Joyce
2 years ago
Once again, a poor title. A better title would be “How the Left Was Well-Intentioned but Misguided as it Attempted Fulfill the White Man’s Burden to Africa and the Third World.”
As noted in the article, Corona is hardly the gravest threat facing Africa. Also, can someone please fact-check this: The pressure from multinational donors for African countries to reach a 60% vaccination target, meanwhile, has led to disturbing recent reports of forced vaccination in Rwanda, where vaccinees have been handcuffed and beaten to comply. I thought this was Austria, not Rwanda. If Africa wants vaccines, let them pay for them like any other market transaction. If Africa is so advanced, a shining Wakanda on a hill, let the COWs (Citizens of Wakanda) research and develop their own vaccines–easy-peasy, they’re so advanced. Have you noticed that the fake experts on the BBC first repeated the tosh “No one is safe until everyone is safe,” and then discouraged people from getting second jabs and booster jabs, against the science, I might add, as this was unfair to Africa! They seemed to have moved on now to hectoring that the West should abandon the intellectual property that made the vaccines possible because….well, Africa is a basket case, they can never do it on their own. So what?
I’m in South Africa. Plenty of vaccines but limited interest from the people. Covid is just not a big deal. As we exit the so-called 4th wave with under 30% of eligible people double-jabbed and few restrictions (even those that remain are poorly adhered to) the pressure is to revoke emergency powers and get on with life. South African doctors knew from the beginning that Omicron was mild and informed the world. Still Chris Whitty claimed ‘all we know about Omicron is bad.’ How’s that for wifull misinformation? Shut his Twitter account and remove him from YouTube.
David Giles
2 years ago
So, I stand on the street and offer £100 free to every man and woman passing, black, white, Indian, Chinese; I don’t distinguish. But some men refuse my offer; how exactly have I discriminated against them?
The discrimination starts when you *force* people to accept your money, and if they don’t there will be retribution.
Also, your “gift” may still come with a price tag.
New Zealand only had a national lockdown for two months: 26 March to 27 May 2020. Since 8 June 2020 almost everyone has been free to go about their business as normal. Post-lockdown economic recovery was rapid. Covid deaths: 52. Proportion of population vaccinated: 77%.
Throughout history the most effective way of dealing with a pandemic has been to close borders immediately, isolate, quarantine, lockdown for a very short period, and vaccinate.
Global Covid deaths: 5.5M to 28M. Vietnam pop. 98M, 37,291 Covid deaths. Taiwan pop. 24M, 850 Covid deaths. UK pop. 70M, 176,000 Covid deaths. Scotland & New Zealand have roughly same size population: 5 million; Scot Covid deaths 10,275; NZ deaths 52. Singapore pop. 5.7M, 850 Covid deaths.
The tourism industry in New Zealand adapted their businesses to reduction in numbers of incoming international travellers (who cause pandemics).
Unlike most citizens of the UK in NZ the majority are totally committed to biosecurity because pathogens harm the economy, the environment and their way of life.
Only in about 6 countries politicians and citizens worked together to keep Covid deaths as low as possible. (International hub Hong Kong pop. 7.5M, 213 deaths.)
The free flow of people and pathogens has led to the deaths of the poor and those with poor health.
COVID-19 pandemic indicates large structural inequalities leading to disparities in health outcomes related to socioeconomic status.
Low-income workers suffer from higher hospitalisation and fatality rates than their counterparts with higher wages.
“People living in more socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods……..have higher rates of almost all of the known underlying clinical risk factors that increase the severity and mortality of COVID-19, including hypertension, diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease, liver disease, renal disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity and smoking.”
In the UK about 8,300 died every month over the last 12 months: since 1 January 2021 about 100,000 deaths mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate. 1,828 mostly the unvaccinated died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test from 22 to 28 January 2022.
Compare and contrast: South Korea pop. 52M; 6,712 Covid deaths; UK pop. 70M; 176,000 deaths where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate; US pop. 330M, 75,271,402 coronavirus cases and 905,661 Covid deaths.
The govt.nz web site describes the island as having an “isolated position”, a statement underscored by the size of the population. In fact the total number of people in NZ is dwarfed by the total number of passengers going through any one terminal at Heathrow; LHR being just one of six international airports serving London. Even tiny Edinburgh airport serves more travellers than New Zealand receives tourists in any given year.
I don’t think you realise just how meaningless yours stats are. It’d be fun to tow New Zealand into the Bay of Biscay, overlap the coast with the Côte d’Argent, give it a population density roughly comparable with other EU nations – that’d mean adding roughly 60 million people into your mix – and see if it’s policy or geography that counts.
You’ve missed the point which is that travellers shouldn’t have been allowed to enter the UK from any point of entry into the UK. I was in transit in the international hub of Hong Kong in March 2020. Its airport was deserted because the authorities had closed their borders. The stats reveal that 6 countries large and small with borders closed have far fewer Covid deaths. Scotland and NZ have a population of 5M; Scot Covid deaths 10,000; NZ 52 deaths. 18.1 million entered the UK between January and March 2020 bringing with them zoonotic pathogens. Majority of people in NZ are interested in biosecurity, in the UK they appear not. Thoughtful essay worth reading if interested: ‘Why haven’t we learned from past pandemics?’ https://blogs.bmj.com/ebn/2020/07/13/why-havent-we-learned-from-past-pandemics/ ‘How the lessons of previous epidemics helped successful countries fight covid-19’ https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n486
Main Edition
US
FR
Come on Toby – what Right policies pushed the Vax mandates? Who really forced the universal uptake of the Vaccine, closing schools, shutting small business, locking people in their houses, printing money to make the elites even more filthy richer, the ‘passports’, the work from home, the lockdowns, the lies and censoring and closing social media accounts? The Left The Progressive Left most of All. You own this mess, your Guardian sorts. Notice the Blue States (Democrats) and how different they are from the Republican states – Note the Marxist Teachers Unions in every land shut the schools and destroyed the young peoples education although the young do not suffer from covid.
Everyone Must watch Senator Ron Johnson (Republican) two days ago held a Senate Meeting with the world’s top scientists who are brave enough to tell the real story of this whole Covid Monstrosity Reaction brought by the Left. Toby – why has every voice against the lockdown and mandates and vax been from the Right? (excepting Peirs Corbyn) And every voice pushing it been from the hard, or Progressive, Left?
Take 4 1/2 hours and watch the US Senate (all is now on the official US Senate Records – this is official). It is fascinating, you wish they had another 10 hours to get deeper into it all….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asw_FBipVpg
Unless you watch it you cannot understand the last two years.
Yes Galeti. What has been so bizarre for me is how my previous social-democratic leanings have been consistently pushed to the right over the last two years. To have Nigel Farage speaking sense is very troubling LOL! . I am now not clear where my political home is anymore. I wonder what restructuring of the political landscape is underway.
Indeed
Well said!
Yes liberals are no longer ‘liberal’ and progressives are no longer ‘progressive’. Many of us have looked for new political homes.
Very well said. Many are in the same boat as you.
There is a huge difference between pseudo-progressives (including broad swaths of the media, NGO, academic, technocratic class as well as the titanic corporations which dominate the economy) and the actual left which remembers that our movement is concerned with inequality and is rooted in the working poor.
Indeed. It was illuminating that for all the faults, it was the Corbynites who supported the Tory rebels in the vote on further restrictions before Christmas.
What I find surprising is the suppression of information by the BBC and the mainstream media on the protests that are taking place across the globe against Vaccine Mandates. The Canadian Truckers campaign has not been mentioned on the BBC as far as I can see. I wonder when this alternative movement that is worldwide will breakthrough into the mainstream. Justin Trudeau called the truckers ‘unacceptable’ and now people are creating personal hashtags that begin #unacceptable. Feels like the tide is turning:)
Thank you for this essay. I believe we should all be periodically reminded of the effects of vaccine mandates, and the one-size-fits-all response to the pandemic, on the world’s poorest countries.
For me, the most troubling thing mentioned in this article is the requirement imposed on poor African countries to take out loans to pay for universal vaccination. If the West is so utterly determined to impose its strategy for virus control on poor nations then it should at least pay for the vaccines.
Global three letter organisations have become so powerful that they dictate how things are going to be. Poorer nations either comply or they have to go sit on the naughty step for a few years. There wishes and democratic viewpoint are no longer respected. They will do what the three letter organisation suggests or they will be made to suffer.
And if any political ideology is to blame f r this it is the left, who seem to have taken over every organisation in the world from schools to NGOs to the civil service.
A scary thought.
And not just Africa. I live in Sri Lanka where there is a huge foreign exchange and debt crisis (engendered by an incompetent government and blamed on Covid, naturally) but where tourists are encouraged to get and pay for boosters while the locals, who are entitled to them for free, face a shortage. It’s a mad world, for sure.
That is the 2nd most troubling thing for me. The first is that Rwandans have been handcuffed and beaten to be forced vaccinated!
But shouldn’t we be respectful of the differences in cultures? :/
In general a good essay but
” A focused protection approach might have geared all efforts towards reaching the highest possible vaccination coverage in people aged 60+ as quickly as possible — including, as a last resort, age-specific mandates (unnecessary in practice because people in this age group, in general, are more than happy to get vaccinated).”
Mandates should never, ever be used for health interventions regardless of whether the majority of a particular target for those mandates has no issue with the intervention. In relation to covid19, the risk of death for a woman in her early sixties with no underlying conditions is one in one thousand, according to the Qcovid risk calculator. I suspect that the risk is still overestimated but in any event that’s a risk some are happy to take, and should be allowed to take. It will cost the state far less if I die of any given respiratory virus than if the state pays tens of thousands of pounds for health interventions that prolong my life until I end up at an advanced age, with no friends or relatives, suffering from dementia in a nursing “home,” many years later. That will release money to pay for health care for younger people, reduce the burden on the health and care systems, and indeed on the state pension. That does not prevent other people seeking whatever health interventions are offered by the healthcare system to prolong their own lives.
The right to refuse medical treatment exists for good reasons, and in fact is a central tenet for those who wish to promote euthanasia – a focus of heated debate currently which I find sits extremely uncomfortably with the simultaneous insistence that no one must die of a particular disease. The suggestion that mandates should be used for any section of society, age-specific or otherwise is utterly abhorrent.
“It will cost the state far less if I die of any given …” Good point. Those whom I know who chose to take the advice and stop smoking 40/50 years ago are now costing the State a fortune in health care and generous pensions. Those who continued to smoke are long gone having paid loads more high taxes on ciggies: good job ‘stop smoking’ was not mandated in the ’70’s!
I agree with your reasoning with the caveat that should you take the decision to be unprotected and catch Covid, you should survive or die ‘naturally’ without taking up an intensive care bed to do it (freeing it up for a younger patient) and saving £thousands in care
It’s also a generational injustice. I could rewrite a passage thus: ‘ The Western boomer’s comforting canard, that “No one’s safe until everyone’s safe”, is shown really to mean that “Until I feel safe, I will continue to destroy the livelihoods and health outcomes of younger generations”.’
This article’s (current) headline The Left-wing case against vaccine mandates illustrates to a T what Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying predicted in their DarkHorse Podcast Clip titled What happens next with the public health tyrants (from Livestream #112) | ‘Covid narrative collapse on elites’ >> https://odysee.com/@DarkHorsePodcastClips:b/what-happens-next-with-the-public-health:a
haha… Shakespeare, Henry VI
“To whom do lions cast their gentle looks? Not to the beast that would usurp their den. The smallest worm will turn being trodden on, And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.””
The Hard Left, the Progressives, have done their wickedest totalitarian moves on the world – forcing the lockdowns, the universal Vax mandates, the squandering of $$ Trillions, the taking of all freedoms and rights, the Trotsky Teaching Unions closing the schools and Universities destroying a generation of young – who do not suffer from covid anyway – to be economically set back for life, and lost their social growth and pleasure and health…
And now their utter perfidy is exposed, and the vax is shown to be a monstrous campaign which brought 10 harms for every one good – which has bankrupted the world – now they are claiming it was not them! Well the ‘worm has turned’ for being tread on, and now the Third world is aligned with the Western Right in condemning the Progressive Left and its mandates – the Right are finally convincing everyone of what the horrors the Left forced on the world with their lockdowns, money printing, and VACCINE.
Typical Guardian hacks like the above now pretend this all was not their doing…. But it was. The lies, the censoring, the Social Media, MSM banning any content against the Official, Left, one. The forbidding of the thing which works – Early Treatment with available drugs, because if medicine was allowed to cure covid it would cause vax hesitancy – so hundreds of thousands must die to keep the project fear pushing lockdowns and the Vaccine as it is the tool of the Lefty cause to bring the Great Reset.
Who resisted? Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas – the Right. Who pushed it? the Left – New York, California…. The Left did this, they need to own it, not try to weasel out….. and the reckoning is due….
‘Most important of all though, it must be driven by what communities need and want, and not what globalised technocrats determine is good for them.’
What communities need is unlikely to be the same as what communities want; and nobody, least of all the capital-L Left (whatever that is) is going to allow ‘communities’ to decide on their own needs. That will be decided for them by the usual random coalition of incompetent politicians and unsustainable but efficient market operators.
I believe that millions of children & babies in developing countries have forgone the usual delivery of vaccines (mostly sterilising) that protect them against diseases like measles, small pox and polio, because the focus has shifted to rolling out covid vaccinations.
The clue is in the second paragraph. Vaccines are bad because the drug companies make money from them.
Weaponized compassion. Core to Marx et al. And it’s why the left so easily fell in with this narrative of jab or job, get the shot or eat sh!t.
Each and every progressive piece should come with the disclaimer “Place the vomit bowl close”
I also don’t understand the premise that vax hoarding is taking place in rich countries, to the detriment of poor African countries, yet young people in African countries are being beaten in order to force the vax on them?
These vaccines only give short term protection against severe disease. Infection and transmission continue a pace as we have seen recently. Only high risk groups really benefit. 2 shots are followed a few weeks later by a 3rd, and then a few weeks again and a 4th. How many boosters do the ‘compulsory’ proponents propose? Even if 10, a person thus jabbed will still be officially ‘unvaxxed’ after a few months at most, just the same as someone who has never had a single dose but who in the meantime might have lost job, house and family. And all for a virus that is no danger to the vast majority. Even many of those at higher risk might do better to mitigate their lifestyles and improve their immune systems permanently.
Great article and so refreshing to hear so much sense from which ever side of political divide, although many on the right are just as selfish and paranoid as the left.
Look out for the definition of health to be changed soon – “ the WHO’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.
I question who is really forcing these mandates on the young people of African countries. Are these countries independent states or are they still under colonial rule with Dutch and English slave masters forcing them to take the jab?
In addition, what health risk does an older, wealthy, white widow living in Oxfordshire have because a young farm hand in Rwanda is not vaxxed?
Six degrees of Bacon, plus an Omicron R>4.5 maybe??
When will the left liberal progressives admit that forcing the colonial administrations out of Africa too soon caused all the mayhem? Their leaders, educated at the worst marxist universities, Oxbridge, taking faux democracy back home only to be replaced with dictators, warlords and the corrupt.
Didn’t the Left/Democrats make Covid the single issue of the Biden-Trump presidentials? You sow the wind you reap the whirlwind?
Once again, a poor title. A better title would be “How the Left Was Well-Intentioned but Misguided as it Attempted Fulfill the White Man’s Burden to Africa and the Third World.”
As noted in the article, Corona is hardly the gravest threat facing Africa. Also, can someone please fact-check this:
The pressure from multinational donors for African countries to reach a 60% vaccination target, meanwhile, has led to disturbing recent reports of forced vaccination in Rwanda, where vaccinees have been handcuffed and beaten to comply.
I thought this was Austria, not Rwanda.
If Africa wants vaccines, let them pay for them like any other market transaction. If Africa is so advanced, a shining Wakanda on a hill, let the COWs (Citizens of Wakanda) research and develop their own vaccines–easy-peasy, they’re so advanced.
Have you noticed that the fake experts on the BBC first repeated the tosh “No one is safe until everyone is safe,” and then discouraged people from getting second jabs and booster jabs, against the science, I might add, as this was unfair to Africa! They seemed to have moved on now to hectoring that the West should abandon the intellectual property that made the vaccines possible because….well, Africa is a basket case, they can never do it on their own. So what?
I’m in South Africa. Plenty of vaccines but limited interest from the people. Covid is just not a big deal. As we exit the so-called 4th wave with under 30% of eligible people double-jabbed and few restrictions (even those that remain are poorly adhered to) the pressure is to revoke emergency powers and get on with life. South African doctors knew from the beginning that Omicron was mild and informed the world. Still Chris Whitty claimed ‘all we know about Omicron is bad.’ How’s that for wifull misinformation? Shut his Twitter account and remove him from YouTube.
So, I stand on the street and offer £100 free to every man and woman passing, black, white, Indian, Chinese; I don’t distinguish. But some men refuse my offer; how exactly have I discriminated against them?
The discrimination starts when you *force* people to accept your money, and if they don’t there will be retribution.
Also, your “gift” may still come with a price tag.
OK, thank you for explaining to me what I meant by “offer” and “free”. I really meant my gift of free money comes with a price tag; now I know?
FREE ?
New Zealand only had a national lockdown for two months: 26 March to 27 May 2020. Since 8 June 2020 almost everyone has been free to go about their business as normal. Post-lockdown economic recovery was rapid. Covid deaths: 52. Proportion of population vaccinated: 77%.
Throughout history the most effective way of dealing with a pandemic has been to close borders immediately, isolate, quarantine, lockdown for a very short period, and vaccinate.
Global Covid deaths: 5.5M to 28M. Vietnam pop. 98M, 37,291 Covid deaths. Taiwan pop. 24M, 850 Covid deaths. UK pop. 70M, 176,000 Covid deaths. Scotland & New Zealand have roughly same size population: 5 million; Scot Covid deaths 10,275; NZ deaths 52. Singapore pop. 5.7M, 850 Covid deaths.
And how is tourism faring? Your largest export industry?
The tourism industry in New Zealand adapted their businesses to reduction in numbers of incoming international travellers (who cause pandemics).
Unlike most citizens of the UK in NZ the majority are totally committed to biosecurity because pathogens harm the economy, the environment and their way of life.
Only in about 6 countries politicians and citizens worked together to keep Covid deaths as low as possible. (International hub Hong Kong pop. 7.5M, 213 deaths.)
The free flow of people and pathogens has led to the deaths of the poor and those with poor health.
COVID-19 pandemic indicates large structural inequalities leading to disparities in health outcomes related to socioeconomic status.
Low-income workers suffer from higher hospitalisation and fatality rates than their counterparts with higher wages.
“People living in more socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods……..have higher rates of almost all of the known underlying clinical risk factors that increase the severity and mortality of COVID-19, including hypertension, diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease, liver disease, renal disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity and smoking.”
In the UK about 8,300 died every month over the last 12 months: since 1 January 2021 about 100,000 deaths mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate. 1,828 mostly the unvaccinated died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test from 22 to 28 January 2022.
Compare and contrast: South Korea pop. 52M; 6,712 Covid deaths; UK pop. 70M; 176,000 deaths where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate; US pop. 330M, 75,271,402 coronavirus cases and 905,661 Covid deaths.
The govt.nz web site describes the island as having an “isolated position”, a statement underscored by the size of the population. In fact the total number of people in NZ is dwarfed by the total number of passengers going through any one terminal at Heathrow; LHR being just one of six international airports serving London. Even tiny Edinburgh airport serves more travellers than New Zealand receives tourists in any given year.
I don’t think you realise just how meaningless yours stats are. It’d be fun to tow New Zealand into the Bay of Biscay, overlap the coast with the Côte d’Argent, give it a population density roughly comparable with other EU nations – that’d mean adding roughly 60 million people into your mix – and see if it’s policy or geography that counts.
It is obviously both !
You’ve missed the point which is that travellers shouldn’t have been allowed to enter the UK from any point of entry into the UK. I was in transit in the international hub of Hong Kong in March 2020. Its airport was deserted because the authorities had closed their borders. The stats reveal that 6 countries large and small with borders closed have far fewer Covid deaths. Scotland and NZ have a population of 5M; Scot Covid deaths 10,000; NZ 52 deaths. 18.1 million entered the UK between January and March 2020 bringing with them zoonotic pathogens. Majority of people in NZ are interested in biosecurity, in the UK they appear not.
Thoughtful essay worth reading if interested: ‘Why haven’t we learned from past pandemics?’ https://blogs.bmj.com/ebn/2020/07/13/why-havent-we-learned-from-past-pandemics/
‘How the lessons of previous epidemics helped successful countries fight covid-19’ https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n486
The NZ facts are correct-so why the downvotes ??