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April 8, 2021 - 11:10am
First things first: if you are offered a vaccine, take it.
Second things second: I was wrong, and overconfident. I wrote a piece back when certain European countries suspended the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab, implying that the regulators were innumerate: that they saw 37 blood clots among people who’d had the Ox/AZ vaccine and leapt to ban it, even though 37 was far fewer than you’d expect among a perfectly healthy population.
It’s become clear since then that the clot was of a particular, rare type, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), combined with a reduced number of platelets — clotting cells in our blood. I’m told that it’s a particularly unusual presentation, so you can’t easily compare it to the base rate of CVST in the population (between 2 and 5 per million); it looks plausible, though not yet confirmed, that it is a causal relationship.
Since that piece about the vaccine included a “statistical style guide” taken from my new book, and given that the 11th rule of that style guide is “If you get it wrong, admit it,” I want to make that clear now. I still think that the decision was, as I said at the time, stupid and harmful — it has reduced confidence in a very safe, very effective vaccine and I am sure has cost more lives than it saved — but it was not a straightforward numerical error.
The clotting problem seems more common among younger people, and since younger people are also at much lower risk from Covid, the risk-benefit calculation, at an individual level, is quite close. If you are under 30 and if the virus is relatively rare (assuming around two people per 10,000 have it, as was the case last month), then the direct risk to you of ending up in ICU from one of these rare clots appears to be about the same as the risk of ending up in ICU from Covid: about one in 100,000 in 16 weeks, per these very helpful graphics from the Winton Centre for Risk & Evidence Communication in Cambridge.
As a result the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has issued guidelines that the Ox/AZ vaccine should only be offered to under-30s if there isn’t another one available. (It has not been “ruled out” for younger people, despite some terrible headlines.)
It’s worth thinking about the risks, though. First, the absolute risk is very tiny. Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, of the Winton Centre, tells me that if you filled Wembley Stadium with 20-year-olds, and gave them all the vaccine, then about one of them would end up in ICU with a clot, and in the next 16 weeks (given the current prevalence of the disease), about one of them would end up in ICU with Covid. When you take into account the fact that most people who have these clots survive, your risk of death is about the same as that of being killed crossing the road in any given six-month period, and I cross the road quite happily all the time. In essence, as has always been the case, young people are at very low risk from Covid.
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SubscribeTom, if you’re elderly and vaccinated, why should you care whether the young and healthy are transmitting covid amongst themselves (and continuing to build herd immunity by the way)?
Exactly. And if you’re young and healthy and grandma’s been vaccinated, why the hell are you locked down when you could be out acquiring natural immunity (and building herd immunity)?
We are not in a sane place.
None of this makes any damn sense. It makes me wonder if the powers that be know something we don’t – or if the conspiracy theorists might actually have a point,
I have listened to some medical doctors who claim with full confidence that if therapeutics are given at the onset, hospitalizations and deaths would be much less and without requiring the masses to be given this experimental jab. It is when some people hear things they can’t imagine, they call those people conspiracy theorists. Then when the predictions come to be, they scratch their heads that maybe after all, those people knew something they didn’t.
Yes, doctors are finally speaking up and this is the message. In my country they were quiet for fear of being called quacks and ousted of their profession for being professionals and following their oath. Puppet masters have done tremendous damage. Mr. Chivers is so pro-vaccine with no openness to medicine it’s disturbing. The greatest value of his columns comes from these reader comments. He never even touches what has happened with past vaccine disasters. Will he just admit he’s wrong in eight months or two years? Too late then. I think the data about vaccines for non-elderly is not compelling enough for mass vaccination during an evolving pandemic.
I think there’s a fine line between conspiracy and cover up. The conspiracy theories are probably way off the mark but they’re fuelled by the cover ups and deceptions of governments and health authorities that in general fear the masses and consider them too stupid to be trusted, so maintaining control becomes the main objective. But at the same time, they don’t know what to do, what data to believe, just like the rest of us, only they have to pretend they do. All of which results in an anti-democratic-authoritarian-spiral.
“Conspiracy theorists” is media term for people who question approved orthodoxy, standing in same relation to Covid as “racists” to Diversity, those who dare to notice their ethnic displacement in their own ancestral homeland.
If anyone subscribes to a theory that two or more people are conspiring….then those people IMHO should own the title..
Few grandmas have had their second dose yet, so they are not fully immune. The vaccine is not 100% effective in any case and grandmas are very vulnerable if they get COVID. Moreover, with high rates of transmission among young people there is a higher risk of a variant arising that the vaccine is less effective (or even ineffective) against. It may be a fine balance – but hardly ‘insane’.
Actually grandpas are a lot more vulnerable to the virus than “grandmas”. But that’s so with flu and normal pneumonia too.
There is no evidence for any variant being more infectious than another.
There is no evidence of increased/decreased effectiveness of any of these experimental products depending upon the variant encountered.
There is strong evidence of people posting comments on news sites/blogs with little or no evidence to back their claims.
So where’s the evidence to back your claims then?
Because Tom is pushing vaccines on everyone and saying they are safe and effective – spewing the same narrative as government, the media, and big pharma is saying.
Yes Tom, please answer to Adam.
Also, why do you keep pushing vaccines to people and cohorts that do not need it? Why are you so unscientific in your arguments about science? Why is no one pushing for antibody passports? And why do I get the feeling that you somehow get some money from pharma componies
You put to words my exact feelings. Is Tom a Big Pharma bot? Seriously loses my credibility with his religious fervour for experimental science. Nuremberg comes to mind.
Really????. What’s wrong with Tom having freedom of speech to say what he believes is true. There isn’t backhanded payment behind everything.
Nobody says he shouldn’t speak
Because increased transmission increases the risk of a new variant evolving that would be more transmissable / more lethal / make younger people sicker. This can happen quite rapidly (see Brazil).
The increased transmissability is a particular problem right now because not much of the world is vaccinated. More transmissable variants will travel so one ends up exporting the problem to other countries (e.g. B117 now in Germany and the US) >> more transmission in a different population >> more variants.
Increased transmissability = more hospitalisations and as is clear now in Germany, the people getting sicker now are, younger, not dying but just spending longer blocking hospital beds.
The feasability of allowing herd immunity to develop “naturally” in the young depends on your health care capacity and specifically how many properly staffed critical care beds you have + how quickly you want to get back to normal service with your health care system + how many deaths from this disease the general population is willing to stomach.
Incidentally, there is good evidence now (notably from Israel) that the current vaccines reduce up your nose viral loads and transmission.
Having researched this quite deeply – but acknowledging I am not an expert in virus transmission – my understanding is that the virus mutations typically become weaker as time goes on…..it’s in the virus’s interest to be less lethal as that ensures its survival.
I read a medical paper the other day saying that the 1918 flu virus is still around today. Sars-COV-2 isn’t going away either.
Personaly I know of only one proven example – myxoma – introduced to Australia in the 1950s from South America to control invasive European rabbits. Over a couple of decades it’s virulence reduced from 99.8% down to 70 – 95%.
Ebola, Zika and chikungunya viruses have shown no signs of becoming less pathogenic in the relatively short time since jumping to humans. HIV is as slippery and clever as ever.
With SARS people only transmitted when they became sick and so could be easily identified and quarantined, rapidly >> rapid control and elimination of transmission.
With flu, epidemics in the past have waned as natural immunity (+ vaccinations more recently) have exerted their effects not because the particular virus strain itself has become less transmissable. As you say, the flu model is the most likely sequelae for Sars Cov 2.
There is still some argument among virologists about the origin (in 1898 ?) and evolution of the 1918 flu virus.
Thanks Elaine. That’s very interesting. I’m always keen to learn more.
You can always rely on E G-L for a considered and informed view on this issue.
At the outset, let me say I am no expert on viruses. My interest stems from spending time in the tropics and contracting dengue and chikungunya. That said, I do not think you should group viruses that are primarily spread by the intermediatary services of the mosquito with those spread by respiration and airborne droplets. I believe the mosquito spread viruses have a better chance of staying pathogenic as the mosquito is very efficient and effective as a transmitter.
There are good nasal sprays based on seaweed extract that very much reduce the viral load in the nose (interestingly, this was first demonstrated in Israel) Boots nasal spray is a cheap example – and just as effective, vaseline with a few drops of tea tree oil and/or oregano oil stops practically any virus in its tracks. As does gargling with a good mouthwash, with a drop of iodine added if you want to be absolutely sure. All with no risk whatsoever. But no profits to pharmaceutical companies of course!
Crankery and Woo. If this were the case HIV infections in the 80s would have been treated the same as having a ‘funny turn’.
What do nasal sprays and mouthwash have to do with STDs?
“But no profits to pharmaceutical companies of course!”
In the case of the AZN vaccine (the subject of this article) what profit are you referring to ?
Actually if lockdown works in reducing transmission it encourages more virulent strains by meaning that only virulent strains get transmitted or make people sick enough to get near to other people to transmit it to them.
It is basic Darwinian theory. The virus will adapt to suit the environment that best allows it to spread.
Similarly with the vaccines. Only the variants that get around the vaccine will spread.
Best with a virus as, relatively, harmless as C-19 to allow it to spread and get herd immunity to the less deadly variants.
Nobody said it was pleasant but that is what all Govt and WHO pandemic preparedness plans were based on until they all decided to copy a totalitarian communist state into locking down.
I could not agree more Rob. Nice and succinct. I have read this elsewhere and it makes sense to me.
Vaccines don’t offer 100% immunity from disease or serious disease.
Quite so, but they do generate enormous profits for Big Pharma, which makes up for it.
In the case of the AZN vaccine (the subject of this article) what profit are you referring to ?
Breeding mutations?
Glad Chivers admitted he was dead wrong as I commented upon right away in his previous article on the matter. But even now he gets it wrong. The appearance of regular deep vein thrombosis never exceeded what one would expect in the general population by chance. The appearance of CVST and disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) was always greater than expected – these blood clotting conditions that involve low platelet counts are exceedingly rare and very very difficult to treat with something close to 50% mortality.
May I suggest that Chivers actually research the subject matter before making pronouncements. That is what serious journalists should do. Given that Chivers is not medically trained, he would have been well advised to consult his local GP who could have told him right away (assuming they remembered anything from med school) that these conditions are extremely rare and very deadly, and hence their appearance following AZ vaccination in unusually large numbers (albeit infinitesimally small compared to the total vaccinated) was clearly an issue from the get go that didn’t require a rocket scientist or brain surgeon to appreciate.
On another note, it will be interesting to see whether these rare low platelet blood clotting issues are also associated with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine, or for that matter the J&J and Russian adenovirus-based vaccines. The issue is whether this is purely associated with the AZ carrier vehicle, a chimpanzee adenovirus, or whether it’s associated with the production of SARS-CoV2 spike protein itself. If the latter, this would be an issue with all the vaccines.
One troubling accept of the current vaccination drive both in the US and UK is the sheer dishonesty of the process. Every drug and vaccine have a whole slew of potential and rare side effects. None of the vaccines are 100% safe, and pushing them as such is just dishonest and unhelpful. It is also unhelpful to push for the vaccination of groups that are essentially at zero risk of dying, which includes any healthy individual below the age of 50 as well as anybody who has had and survived COVID.
Absolutely, I agree Johann. It nearly makes me chuckle when ‘they’ say they are safe and effective. For Pete’s sake, theses so-called vaccines are still in trials until 2023.
I understand that they are not actual vaccines in the true sense (i.e. contain dead or altered virus), but some sort of genetic manipulation.
It depends if you are subject to blood clots dont have vaccine..30 cases out of Over 34 million is not enough for mainstream media hysteria &rubbish…
You have to understand that you open yourself up for various ultimately-deadly and incurable diseases/conditions whenever a needle enters your vains and squirts *any* vaccine into your body, depending on your genetic predisposition, general health, sleep quality, diet, stress levels, etc. I think its absolutely bananas, that folks are speaking in platitudes such as “vaccines are safe”. No medical treatment (pharmaceutical at least), or vaccine administration is anywhere near ‘risk free’.
At nearly 70 I had no ill effects my neighnour in her early 40s &obese had Various problems,Sweats,headache for two days..
You are open to many undesirable outcomes just by living.. lots of life is risk assessment. Otherwise we’d never cross the road. You weigh the risks and benefits. I need to get to the pub….obvious benefit worth the risks of crossing the road.
You’re at far more risk crossing the road on your way back from the pub than on your way to it. Fact.
What in life is risk free ? More than 10,000 people died falling out of bed last year.
I’m not aware of anyone in authority pushing any vaccine as 100% safe.
Very well said.
In addition : Dr. Mike Yeadon, ex vice-president of Pfizer, senior immunologist and expert in respiratory diseases, warns that the Sars-Cov-2 virus spike protein is not inert but is biologically active. One of its actions is to cause cells to become “sticky”, to clump together, which presumably helps the virus adhere and get embedded. This would explain the mechanism by which blood clots occur. If this is so, all the present vaccines would carry a risk of blood clots, as they all get the body to manufacture the spike protein.
Maybe if the body contained the whole virus, not just the spike artificially generated and isolated from the whole, there would be less risk? There’s so much we don’t know. What the hell are we playing with?
And one more comment for Chivers. He needs to stop talking about risk and risks being tiny. Of course the risk is very very small, although that risk is higher in women under 50 (the susceptible group in this instance). But here is the key point: if you are a young and healthy woman, get the AZ vaccine (or maybe the others as well), and then die (or experience a life-threatening condition) due to a vaccination that was completely unnecessary in the group that you belong to, that young woman would be none too happy.
The bottom line: vaccinate those at risk. i.e. anybody over the age of 60, but tread very lightly for those younger where the risks of COVID are themselves tiny (and equivalent to a cold or mild flu). And make very clear what the risks are just as they do in the US on TV adverts for any drug. That way individuals can make their own choices.
Unfortunately, both in the US and UK there is a huge push to vaccinate those who are really not at risk of any severe outcome with COVID, including now children.
I don’t think anyone under 60 should have to have the jab anyway, unless specifically vulnerable. That would solve this problem of clots in the young and negate any arguments for ‘Covid passports’. Makes me wonder why they are pushing them so much – they can only do so if universal mandatory annual vaccines become the norm – and there is no logical reason for that.
It is about money and control.
The AZ vaccine is being sold at cost.
People keep telling me that the young don’t need to worry about catching Covid because the risk of death for those without any of the fabled underlying conditions is very low. Very low, but still an order of magnitude greater than the risk from the vaccine.
How do you KNOW Dougie what the actual risk is from the vaccine? We are still in the midst of the experimental trial. You can’t possibly make this absolutist statement.
I believe Dougie doesn’t know that the vast majority of vaccines in production and active use require a human trial lasting between 7-9 years on average.
And neither can you. You can’t know it’s “bad” . Like life it’s risk vs reward
Dougie, research historic vaccine and medical mistakes. In France the child narcoleptics allegedly took eight months before they were acknowledged. Thalidomide, common when I was born, took years before this German drug was banned. Horrifying results. Trials end in 2023. I’m anxious to see the results.
Very well said in both of your comments. I would add that people who are metabolically healthy and in otherwise good health do not need the vaccine either, regardless of whether they are 60, 70, 80 or more.
Chronological age has very little to do with biological age. Someone might be 60 on their birth certificate but have a biological age of 30.
The vaccine should be voluntary and purely a personal choice. Those of us who are knowledgeable about health and wellness have the tools to look after ourselves and therefore the risk-reward of taking a vaccine is skewed totally towards risk.
And we aren’t a risk to others if we follow the social distancing rules and isolate if needed. On top of that, the asymptomatic spread is negligible anyway.
And the evidence for your bald assertions ?
I don’t understand the logic of only under 30s being offered a different vaccine when the average age of people suffering the clots was 32. My two daughters are aged 31 and 33 and have an inherited clotting disorder the risk to them far outweighs the risk of COVID
If I’ve understood the article rightly, a more correct headline would be “On the AstraZeneca jab, maybe Europe was right after all to claim a causal relationship between the vaccine and blood clots but still wrong to stop using it”. But yeah, not as snappy/clickbaity as what’s there.
To Mr Chivers’ credit, his headline does include the word “maybe”, which is a word I’ve started mentally adding to pretty much every Covid-related headline I read…
I don’t think under 30s should have to have the jab at all, or even under 50s. If all the old and vulnerable people are jabbed then the risk of hospitalisation or death is automatically reduced almost completely, even if they come into contact with an infectious person (otherwise, what’s the point of vaccination at all?). It’s another reason why the whole premise of national and mandatory vaccinations for everyone, every year, or not be allowed to go to the pub, really is so disproportionate as to be positively Orwellian and must be resisted. The young, and all our freedoms, must not be sacrificed for the old and unwell, it’s totally against the natural order of things. For something like this to be seen as necessary or even beneficial strains credibility. It makes me wonder if all the conspiracy theorists about the Great Reset and Davos and China and the NWO might actually have a point.
Even if you are healthy and over 50 you shouldn’t have to have this jab. It should be a choice – period. I think there is a lot to be said for this talk on the Great Reset. It sure is panning out that way, sadly.
Er, having the vaccine is a choice and will remain so. Period.
Unless, of course, you work in healthcare, the world’s largest industry…where mandatory vaccination is somewhat-understandably common, and where lifelong effects from lifelong vaccination is unfortunately, also very common.
“No jab, no job”.
That is a choice?
Agree completely. The response from the beginning has always outweighed the risks from the virus.
And to add to your comment that ‘under 50s’ don’t need the vaccine, I’d like to point out that there are people who are in an older age bracket but are in great health and therefore don’t need it either.
Those in the older generation who are in fantastic health are putting themselves at risk for zero, or very small, benefits.
It should be personal choice. Without all the guilt-tripping “kill a granny” nonsense that is being pushed on us.
If all the old and vulnerable people are jabbed then the risk of hospitalisation or death is automatically reduced almost completely, even if they come into contact with an infectious person (otherwise, what’s the point of vaccination at all?).
As others have pointed out, because by reducing the amount of virus circulating you reduce the risk of variations that are less susceptible to vaccines. And because the vaccines aren’t 100% effective for the old and vulnerable and the unvaccinated young and fit aren’t totally invulnerable to serious illness or death from Covid.
The young, and all our freedoms, must not be sacrificed for the old and unwell, it’s totally against the natural order of things.
You could say that about any intervention designed to prolong the lives of the elderly or unwell. Spending money keeping the elderly alive inevitably involves an opportunity cost.
Having a debate about where the line is drawn is one thing – suggesting the natural order of things is that the old and unwell are sacrificed for the young is another. You probably didn’t mean that – but we should be careful with words.
“If you are offered a vaccine, take it.”
Shan’t. So there.
Who is this columnist to tell me what to do? I’m capable of doing my own research, weighing the various risks, and making my own decisions.
Visit the GOV.UK website and find the page where one can report adverse effects after having either the Pfizer or Astra Zeneca injection (“Yellow card” system). Here you’ll find data from those who actually took the trouble to report troubling symptoms on this system. These range from relatively mild (flu-like symptoms, bad headache, muscle pain, dizziness, blurred vision, rashes, extreme fatigue etc) to much more severe (strokes, heart attacks, limb paralysis,fainting/unconsciousness, thrombosis, sudden deafness, blindness, whole-body rashes, unusual blood clots, Guillame-Barre syndrome, transverse myelitis, sudden unexplained death).
These symptoms are listed under both types of vaccine, but many more under the Astra-Zeneca as it happens.
So if someone is healthy and unlikely to become seriously ill from Covid, why should they be told to risk either of these vaccines? And as for long-term side effects, we simply do not and cannot yet know.
If someone has already had Covid and has antibody immunity, why are they urged to get vaccinated against the disease they’ve already had? That goes against all previous vaccine policy, and could be very dangerous. Yet no-one is tested for antibodies beforehand. No vaccine in the world has ever been proved more effective than natural immunity.
By all means vaccinate those genuinely most at risk from Covid, but anyone who continues to push for universal vaccination regardless of medical history, age, risk factors, present state of health, other medications etc must either be crazy or have some dishonest agenda.
The following extract makes interesting reading.
Link: https://scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-rna-based-vaccines-and-the-risk-of-prion-disease-1503.pdf
Microbiology & Infectious Diseases 2021 ISSN 2639-9458 Volume 5, Issue 1
COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease by J. Bart Classen, MD
Results:
Analysis of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19 identified two potential risk factors for inducing prion disease is humans. The RNA sequence in the vaccine [3] contains sequences believed to induce TDP-43 and FUS to aggregate in their prion based conformation leading to the development of common neurodegerative diseases.
In particular it has been shown that RNA sequences GGUA [4], UG rich sequences [5], UG tandem repeats [6], and G Quadruplex sequences [7], have increased affinity to bind TDP-43 and or FUS and may cause TDP-43 or FUS to take their pathologic configurations in the cytoplasm. In the current analysis a total of sixteen UG tandem repeats (ΨGΨG) were identified and additional UG (ΨG) rich sequences were identified. Two GGΨA sequences were found. G Quadruplex sequences are possibly present but sophisticated computer programs are needed to verify these.
The spike protein encoded by the vaccine binds angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), an enzyme which contains zinc molecules [8]. The binding of spike protein to ACE2 has the potential to release the zinc molecule, an ion that causes TDP-43 to assume its pathologic prion transformation [9].
Extract:
Over the last two decades there has been a concern among certain scientists that prions could be used as bioweapons. More recently there has been a concern that ubiquitous intracellular molecules could be activated to cause prion disease including Alzheimer’s disease, ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases. This concern originates due to potential for misuse of research data on the mechanisms by which certain RNA binding proteins like TDP-43, FUS and others can be activated to form disease causing prions. The fact that this research, which could be used for bioweapons development, is funded by private organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Ellison Medical Foundation [2] without national/international oversight is also a concern. In the past, for example, there were prohibitions for publishing information pertaining to construction of nuclear bombs.
If you are under 30 and if the virus is relatively rare (assuming around two people per 10,000 have it, as was the case last month), then the direct risk to you of ending up in ICU from one of these rare clots appears to be about the same as the risk of ending up in ICU from Covid:
That is a better argument against the jab than for it. Oh, by the way; if the Covid risk is reduced to its more likely outcome – either being asymptomatic or having mild symptoms that do not require an ICU visit, then the risk is even smaller.
The risk is only about the same over a sixteen week period. For all subsequent sixteen week periods, the risk from the vaccine is zero while the benefit remains high.
An ongoing trial, but you already know the level of risk?
What a clever fellow you are!
Well done for admitting you were wrong on that.
I hope some of the EU anti AZ rhetoric and UK anti-EU rhetoric we see elsewhere will be toned down, now.
I don’t think any of the strident voices proclaiming victory or foul play in the ‘vaccine wars’ have been right on any side. A bit of humility and co-operation all round would be most welcome.
Wonderful hope – don’t be silly.
If the EU anti-AZ shouting had anything to do with the vaccine you might get your hope but since its more about hiding their c**k-ups – not a chance.
I do think the antagonism and insults should be toned down – but I still firmly put the blame at the EU’s door, they have reacted in a way that has made Brexiteers look absolutely correct about the EU’s incompetent, bureaucratic and arrogant mindset.
They are and were correct. Didn’t need the EU vaccine fiasco to show it
So, when the FDA, EMA and MHRA say the gene-based vaccine is safe, what they actually mean it is safe AS FAR AS WE KNOW.
This sort of thing is what is discovered during the phases of the Clinical Trial process, and although it is said that there have been CT’s, they are not recognisable against previous CT’s for previous Live Attenuated Vaccines.
So, once the clot issue has been fully elucidated, will the FDA, EMA and MHRA now say it is safe? If they do, all they actually mean is that it is safe AS FAR AS THEY KNOW. Because there may very well be another issue that comes to light, perhaps during the 2nd jab round. And the numbers may be more than 37.
No-one knows if this vaccine is safe.
I think jf people want to see the side effects of these vaccines you should go to the yellow card system that is on the uk government web site then maybe we could have a real debate about these vaccines and there side effects and deaths according to this website. So by all means support the vaccines if you think that is right but check what may happen to you if you get the jab it might surprise you as of yet i have heard no real debate on this issue.
Yesterday I was prescribed medication for what is a minor neuropathic problem. Like a good soldier I read the list of possible side effects and risks which would have filled two sides of A4 paper without trouble, and covered everything from a mild headache to possible death. Regardless I took the pills as required, and the relief I’ve had in the past 48 hours has been quite remarkable. All medications carry a risk, and what one chooses to put into their body is ultimately down to their informed judgment. There is no compulsion to accept the AZ vaccination, and the constant attempts by our wonderful MSM to find a loophole or pressure a spokesperson into making a verbal error, just so it can be further ‘speculated on as possible fact’ becomes quite wearing.
Very true – your prescribed medication came with a leaflet detailing all possible side effects, gathered from data collected over many years. You read the leaflet and made an informed choice to take the medication. Great!
But no-one turning up for a Covid vaccine is given any information beforehand. Some people I’ve spoken to haven’t even been sure which vaccine they were given (they didn’t think to ask). Others were given an information leaflet – AFTER getting the jab. They mostly went in the bin without being read. No-one as far as I’m aware was given one in advance. You could read about your medication before swallowing the pills. If by any chance you suffered some side effect you could stop taking the pills.
There is no “informed choice” for most people receiving these injections. There haven’t been the usual years of clinical trials. And once the substance is in their systems, whatever the side effects, they can’t remove it, like stopping a course of pills. It’s there for good.
Think about it. There is no equivalence.
It’s awful if it’s not explained prior to vaccine. It was in my case and there’s a lot of information out there for people to access. There are no 5 year studies of vaccine side effects, obviously. But, it’s your choice.
If you don’t think you can make an informed choice to take it, don’t take it,
If the consequence is other people deciding you’re not allowed into their premises, events or buildings That’s their choice. Based on what they know of your choice.
If there’s a reason why people have good medical cause not to take up a vaccine – that can be taken into account,
How can you make an informed choice when there is no real data to base it on. The fact that millions of doses have been given so far without mass deaths or whatever, is no reason to think it is safe – there has not been enough time to judge. And just because the makers and pushers say it is safe does not make it so, no matter how many ‘celebrities’ and government officials showcase their ‘taking the jab’. Six months or so down the line the situation may be quite different.
You were very lucky to have been given information beforehand. I haven’t heard of that happening anywhere, and certainly not here in Wales, where the routine is, get an appointment letter that only tells you how important it is to have “the vaccine” (no brand specified) and how its been “proved safe” (no data to back this up). On arrival at the vaccine centre one is asked if one consents, then the jab is given, then a leaflet is handed to you to take away with your vaccination certificate. My husband never even glanced at his leaflet. Yes, there is information out there for those who want to research beforehand. But what proportion of people do that? They get all their information from the BBC and MSM, all of which pump out the same message, actively discouraging people from doing their own research. Any cautious view is labelled “misinformation” and “dangerous”. Most people just take the vaccine because they’re told it’s the way to freedom and “normality” , because they’ve been made scared stiff of this virus, and they want to believe they’re effective and safe. And because everyone else is having theirs, so that must be ok. Others are being bullied and coerced by workplaces or family members, or the fear of vaccine passports.
That is certainly not informed choice.
Thank you for putting that so well.
Statistics are abstract whereas experience and anecdote carry more weight with some people. All the time there are people in high risk categories for getting seriously ill from CoVid, who don’t get seriously ill. I do not think we should consider ourselves in statistical terms. We should consider ourselves as individuals. We are unique and our immune systems are also unique. The vaccine on the other hand is one dose fits all so there are bound to be problems.
I hear that there are many vaccine doses left at the end of the day and I can only assume that many have not turned up for their appointments. These people may have heard about some, who suffered too much for too long after their jab. Some may have had their first jab and could not face another. This is not to deny the fact that some have had few, if any, adverse effects.
Given how little is known about these vaccines and the immune systems of those having them, they should be treated with great caution. They should be limited to those who will definitely benefit from them and not “rolled out” with no case histories taken. How would you feel if you had a family history of strokes and heart attacks and were being offered the Ox/AZ vaccine?
There are many, many adverse reactions to the vaccines some of them fatal, some disabling and some temporary. You can find them on the government website for yellow card reports.
A few weeks ago it was published that 1,802 vaccinated people were hospitalised with CoVid. These people had done all that they possibly could to avoid infection including getting vaccinated. This I think shows how hard it is to avoid CoVid infection.
However for healthy person, who probably would have coped with Covid, as the vast majority do, to become seriously ill, disabled or to die from an adverse reaction to a vaccine that they were told was perfectly safe cannot be ethical. It becomes less ethical if that person needed to have the jab in order to keep their job or participate in something that was important to them.
“If you’re offered the vaccine, take it!” What are you Mr. Chivers, a journalist or a sergeant major? Anyone who is old enough to be offered a vaccine is old enough to make their own mind up. There are a multitude of very complex reasons why one may or may not want to accept the offer and you have absolutely no right to start your article with such an arrogant and presumptuous order. It is within the realms of possibility that someone could heed your advice and they could be the one in a million (assuming that statistic is accurate) who dies from it. That is why it should be a personal decision. Doctors and health authorities are entitled to give such advice but even they should do so in an advisory manner and not in the bossy way you have. You’ve already admitted you got it wrong once, so maybe you should be a bit more humble.
Here here! I can’t believe Chivers and Sayers are in the same organization.
Wrong againTrial is still in progress. The data are incomplete.
Emergency use of medical products for an illness with such a low infection/fatality rate is unethical.
How many billions have the companies involved been fined in the past for fiddling trial results?.
> But the knock-on effects of vaccinating a Wembley Stadium’s-worth of 20-year-olds would be a major reduction in the transmission of the virus to those around them. It would have very little effect on the risk to the young people themselves, but it would reduce the risk for the older people in their lives significantly.
This demonstrates ignorance of basic bioethics.
Reminder. It is contrary to basic bioethics to treat person A to benefit person B, particularly if that treatment risks harming A.
We cannot mass vaccinate people at an extremely low risk of harm with a vaccine that is known to bring equal harm without breaking long established rules of ethics.
The same issue applies to vaccinating children and also to vaccinating the populations of countries that have not so far been impacted e.g. in Africa, as Macron, Merkel and Johnson have apparently decreed must happen.
The immediate risks of blood clots are only one part of the equation. It’s clear that this risk was not understood when the governments introduced measures to try to compel people to have the vaccines.
And if short-term health impacts from vaccines are not understood, then it’s absolutely certain that long term health impacts are less well understood.
For any normal healthy person under 35, you’re likely to be at much higher risk of ill-health from having a vaccine vs actually getting covid.
For the government to keep up the threats of vaccine passports and ongoing bans on international travel, to force everyone to have the vaccine, is the most disgustingly reckless and immoral behaviour I’ve experienced from any government in my entire lifetime.
The alacrity with which the AZ jab was banned was down to the EU desire to screw over the UK, quite plain and simple.
That was one reason. The fact that for every 3 Euro AZ dose not taken, an EU member state government has to buy a 30 Euro Pfizer dose instead is the other reason. Follow the money.
Bingo!!!!! Jackpot!!!!
Tom Chivers, you say: “But the knock-on effects of vaccinating a Wembley Stadium’s-worth of 20-year-olds would be a major reduction in the transmission of the virus to those around them. It would have very little effect on the risk to the young people themselves, but it would reduce the risk for the older people in their lives significantly.”
How would you know?!?! You’ve already admitted you were “wrong and overconfident” about the AstraZeneca vaccine and Europe…and yet you still say “First things first: if you are offered a vaccine, take it.”
I suggest you are extremely irresponsible in your avid promotion of the experimental Covid-19 vaccine products, and that your objectivity is clouded by your participation in the AstraZeneca vaccine clinical trials, a conflict you continue to fail to disclose on your articles.
We have no idea of the long-term cumulative effects of the Covid-19 vaccine products, and yet the plan is to start vaccination from birth for life, from cradle to grave. It’s astonishing that few are raising the alarm about this deliberate intervention to essentially destroy natural immunity.
What is clear is the mainstream media, which includes UnHerd, is acting as a propaganda arm for the Johnson Government and the vaccine industry, with a few articles here and there providing ‘controlled opposition’.
We’re in a dire situation, without an effective ‘fourth estate’ to shine a light in dark corners of government, and with alternative voices, including doctors and scientists, often being censored on social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
We desperately need a 180 degree turn on this, and objective and independent critical analysis of the rushed Covid-19 vaccine product rollout.
Joy of joys, another humorous, make-it-up-as-I-go-along article by Tom Chivers, the thinking woman’s Dan Hodges, and this time with superb use of the Tony Blair WMD mea culpa: I was wrong, but it was still the right thing to do. Oh, Dr Pangloss, how wise thou art.
Well it was always suspicious to me how other countries were slow to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine despite the UK approving it so quickly. It quickly became a battle with the slow EU EMA and another battle in the Brexit wars; it seemed to completely overlook the fact that big countries such as the USA, Japan and Canada were all taking more time to approve it while the UK rushed headlong in. It is well know Astrazeneca’s reports had not entirely satisfactory data attached to them.
I actually think that the decision was the right one given the variant in the UK and the desperate situation during the winter. But the lack of honesty about the trade-offs involved from the UK government trying to present it as a great post-Brexit triumph -which seems to have worked wonderfully from my social contacts. – strikes me as carrying the very real risk of blowing up in their faces and becoming an own goal if this becomes a major confirmed problem, even if the numbers involved are low and the media is unfairly exaggerating the problems.
Personally as I am living in an EU country for the last few years, I suspect that I will probably end up being vaccined by the J&J vaccine which will probably be dominant given its one-dose capability. Who knows if that is the best option. It hasn’t been approved in the UK yet, which could be poltically motivated, or not – just as Macron’s comments were. This is what happens when decisions get made by the pan et circum system of the modern Western countries.
Personally I would rather be able to get these vaccines based on purely medical (and as a second-order concern economic) criteria rather than a political football by idiotic politicians in both the EU, UK and US.
“First things first: if you are offered a vaccine, take it.”
Why if your risk of harm from COVID is tiny, less than flu? The willing vulnerable have been vaccinated, job done. Has it occurred to you that there may be under reporting and that the desperation to vaccinate when there is no risk anymore is a little peculier?
With most people not at serious risk with the virus, it’s diabolical to interfere with people’s effective natural defences against the virus, with the aim of making them dependent upon Covid vaccine products, i.e. making them dependent upon the vaccine industry, and those who control it, for life.
It’s staggering that already more than 30 million people have had a first dose of Covid-19 vaccine in the UK, and are facing a second dose, plus a third dose/booster in the autumn, and who knows how many more revaccinations throughout life. Do these people realise they are guinea pigs in a massive vaccine trial? Did they give their informed consent to participate in this experiment? Do they know the vaccine manufacturers have been protected from liability?
And now children and young people are in the frame, they are being lined up for lifelong Covid vaccination, even though Covid-19 poses little risk to them. The plan is to start vaccinating babies, lining up people to be repeatedly revaccinated from cradle to grave. How on earth has this been allowed to happen?
How could ethics committees approve protocols for vaccine trials including participants who are not at serious risk of the virus? This is wrong, there must be an investigation
“First things first: if you are offered a vaccine, take it.”
Personally I suggest that Tom leave recommendations as to whether to accept medical treatment to a doctor, after they have reviewed and consulted with their patient.
Then the patient can make an informed decision.
There is no such thing as a treatment that is good for all patients and all cases.
Wow, look at the flak TC is getting here … As ever, I find his analysis intelligent, trenchant and compelling. Despite the guff, TC, keep writing!
I’m incredulous about your comment.
Very deceptive clickbait headline. For example, see what Tom says in paragraph 3.
“If you’re offered a vaccine take it”
Back in the 60s we used to have measles parties deliberately to infect children, because in later life the symptoms could endanger life. Inherited wisdom proving measles poses no threat to infants. Unpleasant but a mortal danger to under fives and grownups only. Mumps and German Measles/Rubella are nothing. You don’t even go to bed.
In 1984 Reagan legislated for drug advertising. Today Big Pharma accounts for 70% of advertising spend in US and to be “anti- vax” is on a par with Europeans desiring not to be ethnic minorities in their ancestral homelands aka “racism”, or questioning the absurd demonisation of “Covid’s” political kin “Carbon”: “climate denier.”
As globalist capo di tutti capi Larry Fink, CEO BlackRock Inc and Agenda Contributor, WEF put it in an interview on Bloomberg last March “Covid, Climate, Racial Justice: the three great issues of our time”. He also made frequent mention of vaccines. That was when ‘lockdown’ was “2 weeks to flatten the curve”.
Media cartels are principal sponsors of the Covid racket which German corporate fraud lawyer Reiner Fuellmich calls “organised crime”. In a recent interview he claims that what we’re witnessing today was originally scheduled for 2050. A “mafia” of about 3,000 global plutocrats ultimately pull the strings.
But he remains confident that his Corona Investigative Committee will eventually take them down, the volume of whistleblowers spilling the beans, e.g. WHO official revealing that Bill Gates has the official status of a country, increasing all the time. The most astonishing claims of criminal activity at the highest levels.
All in the public domain, merely unreported by lying media. One thing we can be sure of at this stage is that none of the depositions will be reported by media “journalists”. Even so-called ‘sceptics’ whose function is to maintain the pretence that Covid is “incompetence”/“disproportionate”, the line of such as Peter Hitchens, are lying by omission. But lying is a condition of employment for a “journalist”. – Latest Reiner Fuellmich interview can be seen on Odysee – German with English subtitles.
So, back in the pre-Vaccine 60’s (I was only born in the sixties, don’t remember them) how did you prevent children who picked up measles at these parties passing the disease on to their younger (and at more risk) siblings?
Never heard of anyone dying from measles. I asked my mother born 1936 and she hadn’t either. My younger sister had measles but not at the same time as me, so obviously got it elsewhere. The point was how could such a customary practice come into being if measles were a danger to children?
I looked it up. 4-500 deaths a year apparently in US in fifties. Doesn’t sound like a lot but more hospitalisations and related illnesses and 3 to 4 million infected. Eradicated by 2000, though.
As for customary practices – they used to apply leeches. Some work, some don’t.
The deaths are of adults and babies. Hence the custom. Mothers wouldn’t deliberately infect their children with measles in successive generations if it were a danger to them. It’s not intended to ‘work’ as a cure but to infect them with a disease which we’re now led to believe is deadly to children. Which is a lie.
I’d sooner believe ordinary people’s experience including my own than official sources or Wikipedia especially in this field where enormous sums of money sponsor media outlets and journalists. Not one media journalist tells the truth re Covid or vaccines generally. Either Reiner Fuellmich and the detailed evidence and allegations of lying and fraud from numerous eminent figures reporting to his Corona Investigative Committee are invention, or media journalists are lying at least by omission.
I prefer to rely on accredited sources. Each to their own. Good luck.
You forget smallpox, TB, Rotavirus, Ebola, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Human papillomavirus, Polio, Rabies, Rubella, Yellow fever, West Nile … I could go on and on, after all there are at least 135 of these beasties that are pathogenic to humans and all can kill under the right circumstances (poverty usually) and in those countries without decent vaccination programmes.
The dangers of some diseases are exaggerated, e.g. Rubella/German Measles which is nothing for children hence the ‘parties’, as it can be a danger in later life. I caught Hepatitis B in Kenya in spite of having all available jabs. That’s no big deal either. The jaundice looks horrendous but no pain or even sickness just a bit of fatigue. Cholera is far more unpleasant but no danger so long as not nutritionally deprived. No less irrational to be pro-vaccine than pro-drugs generally.. Some substances are curative but also poisonous. Pro or anti irrespective of actual circumstances is ridiculous. I’m anti MMR vaccine based on experience of having the diseases along with everyone else, and also because of the blatant lies in the service of unwarranted mass vaccination.
Younger female on the contraceptive pill is a contra-indication, though they are already at risk of clotting issues due to the pill. Of more import is the WHO vaccination protocol, stab and squirt without aspiration (pulling back on the syringe plunger) to check for blood, the vaccine is not meant to be delivered directly into the blood stream but intra-muscularly, direct into the blood stream is very likely to cause clots.
When you talk of the risk of under 30s going into ICU being about 1 in 100,000 from covid or the vaccine you are hiding the fact that for covid sufferers in this group the real number was 0.8 per 100,000 for covid and 1.1 per 100,000 for the vaccine. The vaccine is more likely to see you in ICU than covid. Roughly 37.5% more chance from covid than the jab.
Herd Immunity arrived at the end of last week.”UCL dynamic causal modelling suggests a herd immunity threshold of 73.4% will be reached by tomorrow.”
So the corner was turned on Friday 9th April!
This was probably overshadowed by Prince Philip’s death so passed unnoticed.
Check it out!
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/943791?src=wnl_newsalrt_uk_210408_MSCPEDIT&uac=304947CT&impID=3299248&faf=1
There is nothing more to worry about so let us drop the idea of vaccine passports.
From the start it was pointed out that CoVid19 has a pretty stable genome compared to the highly mutable influenza and HIV. Every time the virus replicates it gets checked for errors in copying its genome so variants that can escape our natural immune defences and the vaccine induced ones are much less likely to occur.
The variants that diverge most from the original infective strain occur in hospitals, where those whose immune systems struggle with the virus enable it to remain in their systems a long time and to undergo many more mutations than would be the case with a normal infection. In this way severely ill, often immunocompromised patients, who may be receiving convalescent plasma, may come to harbour CoVid variants that escape the antibodies they have been administered. This has been likened to antibiotic resistance.
“Extensive intrahost evolution of SARS-CoV-2 has been reported in at least five individuals with protracted infection because of immune impairment from therapy for hematologic malignancies or autoimmunity (3–7). They had active SARS-CoV-2 infection for an average of 115 days before clearing the infection or succumbing to COVID-19. Each patient also had at least one convalescent plasma (CP) treatment (intravenous transfusion of blood plasma from a donor who has recovered from COVID-19) and/or monoclonal antibody therapy. Some of these individuals were shedding high titers of SARS-CoV-2 at the time of discharge from hospital or before death, indicating the potential for transmission. SARS-CoV-2 variants from two of these patients had up to fivefold reduction in neutralization sensitivity to CP (convalescen plasma(3, 7).”
………………
“All the case reports of individuals with extensive intrahost SARS-CoV-2 evolution indicated that they had been treated with suboptimal neutralizing antibodies (that is, the CP(convalescent plasma) treatment did not neutralize the entire virus population). Whether or not antibody therapy played a role, it is likely that the same variants or variants containing new mutations will continue to emerge in different geographic locations as the result of intrahost selection and subsequent transmission.
……………….
“Several studies suggest that the major circulating variants have reduced neutralizing sensitivity to CP (convalescent plasma) and plasma from recently vaccinated individuals………….
“The growing evidence for the emergence of immune escape mutations in protracted SARS-CoV-2 infection and for multiple, rapidly spreading variants should raise broad concern and action………….
“Partial roll-out and incomplete immunization of individuals leading to suboptimal titers of neutralizing antibody could promote selection of escape variants that negatively affect vaccine efficacy…………….
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6536/1306
It seems to me that great care should be taken when treating those who are seriously ill with the virus and especially those treated with convalescent plasma or antibody therapy that the variants that may emerge do not escape into the community.
Because of the essentially stable nature of CoVid 19, infections that happen in the community, are cleared in a short time and do not have time to generate variants are not what we should be worrying about.
Never mind the slight error Tom, now corrected. You are orders of magnitude more clued up than some of the wassocks who comment btl here, with not even a shallow grip upon science, opposed to “lockdowns” (however defined) just for the sake of it and others to vaccines, on the basis of some Mickey Mouse conception of the immune system they undoubtedly got from doing their own “research” – sociopaths, every one of them.
Good article. The facts presented (and I believe them), are:
The hand-waving about what maybe will happen once the virus has had a generation to spread in the population, or what would have happened if it had been possible to protect only the vulnerable is neither here nor there. The basic trade-off is clear: How many extra deaths for other people is it worth to allow each individual a fully free choice of whether to be vaccinated, wear a mask, socially distance, etc.? Clearly it is a trade-off – we did not lock down for flu, even though that would also have saved lives.
If you want to argue that (your) individual freedom is worth a certain number of extra deaths (for other people), that is fair enough. But could you please 1) say so openly, and 2) give a reasoned and realistic estimate of how many extra deaths you are talking about?
Your faith in the “facts” you quote is touching, but misplaced.
1) There is no proof that these “vaccines” prevent either infection by or transmission of the virus. What they do is prevent the virus spreading throughout the system to cause the disease Covid-19. But the virus may still exist in the upper respiratory tract, enabling the vaccinated person to infect others. So a healthy 20 year old who’s been vaccinated is just as likely to spread the virus as one who hasn’t.
2) Your second point is made redundant by the above.
All this virtue-signalling nonsense about the need for healthy individuals not at risk from the disease to risk their own health by accepting an emergency experimental medical treatment to “protect” the lives of those who might be at risk from the disease…well it won’t necessarily protect them for a start; but even if it might do, when in the history of western medicine has it been deemed morally acceptable to expect healthy people to take medical risks on behalf of the unhealthy? I can tell you: never.
…meanwhile young healthy people have already been forced to undego immense sacrifices to “protect” the vulnerable: damaged education, isolation from their peers, increased mental ill-health, rising numbers of suicides….
1) Last I heard vaccines were understood to reduce the viral load, thus expected to reducing spreading even if not necessarily eliminating it. ‘Proof’, as always, will take longer. Meanwhile?
2) OK, you are not willing to take any risk yourself, no matter how much it might help anyone else. I suspeced as much. Still, your honesty is appreciated.
It is not going to “help” anyone else! Just stop this fake-pious nonsense.
People at risk can choose to be vaccinated. Then no-one, vaccinated or not, is going to cause them to get seriously ill, let alone die. And by the way – there is no such thing as “asymptomatic transmission”! Just so you know. That myth has never yielded a shred of actual evidence. And that makes sense: in any viral illness, if you don’t have symptoms it means you don’t have sufficient viral load to infect anybody. If you have sufficient viral load, you’ll have some symptoms. If you’re coughing and sneezing or have a fever or are feeling unwell, STAY HOME and go to bed, and don’t visit your 85 year old grandfather. That would seem like sensible advice.
People who are feeling perfectly well are extremely unlikely to infect anybody. The majority of Covid infections have taken place either in hospitals, or in care homes, from people who are sadly very ill, with a hefty viral load to spread around. Other infections in the community have been from people who thought they had flu or a bad cold, passed either directly through the air or via something they’ve touched. Just like any other virus.
Has anyone up to now been coerced/ shamed into having a flu injection in case they inadvertently happen to give flu to some vulnerable person who might possibly die from it? Of course not. So what’s this new moral imperative all about? It really is nonsense on so many levels.
Your certainty is worthy of a Nobel prize winner. Clearly you know much more, and are much more certain, than the entire scientifial and medical profession.
The typical response of one losing the argument. What about those in the scientific (note spelling!) and medical professions who have a different view from the dishonest ‘official’ narrative or who offer different interpretations of the evidence and data? Are you more knowledgeable than them?
I have no quarrel with her opinions (even if I do not share them) but her overwhelming certainty is really off the scale. The last I heard about asymptomatic transmission was that it was most likely real, but there are not enough data to be completely sure either way. “People who are feeling perfectly well are extremely unlikely to infect anybody.” is, AFAIK, incorrect. How often have we heard about COVID (as opposed to SARS) being transmitted before people show symptoms? As for vaccinations, they are not perfect and still allow for disease and ill effects even if they mostly prevent you from dying.
Jones, Churchill’s scientific intelligence advisor, said “Never think what you want to think before you know what you need to know”. We do not know enough about COVID, and there is certainly room for people to hold quite different opinions. But it irresponsible for anybody – on either side – to claim that they know for certain they are right and everybody else are wrong. Particularly if theirs is a minority view. Personally I will listen to evidence – if presented by someone who seems similarly willing to adapt her views to the data as they change. Will Hilary?
I believe all thinking intelligent people change their views often as they come to learn more. I certainly have. I really didn’t know what to make of any of the Covid drama a year or so ago. I had a completely open mind about it. But I’m someone who thinks independently and needs to be able to make sense of what I’m being told. And nothing in the official narrative seemed to make sense. In fact the narrative itself changed and contradicted itself constantly. So I sought out a variety of voices who seemed well-informed, honest, skilled in their field, questioning, courageous, coherent. And facts and patterns began to emerge that do make sense, and have helped me change my mind about a whole lot of things. I’ve learned loads and that’s enriching even if what I’ve learned can be very worrying sometimes. Yes, as new data emerges I’ve certainly changed my views, with the result that I no longer sit on the fence. OK?
Asymptomatic = Presymptomatic transmission. If you are presymptomatic, by definition, you don’t have symptoms.
Good systematic review on asymptomatic / presymptomatic transmission here :
“Estimating the extent of asymptomatic COVID-19 and its potential for community transmission: Systematic review and meta-analysis” Byambasuren December in JAMMI
Data for this review from all over, from Brunei to Seattle, Shenzhen to Vo.
Some people in the UK can’t / couldn’t afford (for various reasons) to STAY HOME when they felt ill.
Plenty of evidence now from Israel and Scottish health care workers that Pfizer and AZ reduce viral transmission. Citations on request.
Viruses can only evolve if they’re replicating and transmitting. Anything that limits this process (that includes NPIs) will reduce opportunities for evolution and therefore the appearance of new variants.
If we end up with a large pool of younger people all over the world who have not been vaccinated and have less than effective natural immunity (compared with those who have been vaccinated – already been demonstrated) then you should buy shares in big pharma now.
The ignorance about this multiorgan, endothelial, thrombotic disease and how it may be tackled is as deep and wide as any ocean I have ever seen.
We must be the first generation to put the well-being of the old so willingly before the well-being of our children and young people. I know we have moved away from “women and children first,” but surely the latter part still applies. We have taken away their education ( with all that that entails ), the chance to play and make friends, the opportunity to work, the chance to meet and fall in love whilst at the same time making thousands of youngsters prisoners in abusive households. And what’s more, we are now asking the young to take newly developed vaccines that offer zero personal benefit, but that may or may not cause serious side effects over the short, medium and long term, we simply do not know because it is impossible to know. I do not doubt the stringency of the testing by MHRA and I was very glad when my aged parents received their vaccination, but I think it reckless to encourage millions of the young and healthy to take a vaccine that we cannot guarantee to be safe.
You were not wrong about the AZ shot, the risks are so vanishingly small as to not be worth worrying about. Every medicine has side effects, the other vaccines will too, we just don’t know about them yet. But it’s a bog standard risk assessment and it is overwhelmingly in favor of taking the vaccine.
Absolutely – take the vaccine. We didn’t let COVID rip through the less ‘at risk’ population because we don’t live in a society segregated by age. Taking the vaccine is as much about the benefit to the wider community as to the individual. This is about all of us. My elderly mother will be safer out and about again the more people around her are vaccinated. The less COVID there is around the better. I know from my own daughter’s desperate to start living again. Creating memories. The reality is that vaccines will help bring this about. Also, it’s more likely our universities and college campuses will return to life next year without argument or anxiety if all adults are vaccinated (Scotland’s been 100% online from the get go this year. Utterly miserable for students.) Those sectors of the economy crippled by the pandemic disproportionately employ younger adults. They will be able to confidently bounce back for the longer term if their workforce is vaccinated.
Do we really want to get out of this mess? The more get vaccinated, the more is being translated that we disagree among us.. and that is encouragement to continue lockdowns, vaccine passports, debts, unemployment, poverty.. The first who came up with the idea of vaccine passports was china’s president ! Is it not alarming to you? I have seen all from the very first moment, graphs and statistics used to manipulate and spread fear. Are we wasting our time instead of enjoying life to the fullest? There should have never been vaccines because that goes against nature and herd immunity. The variants are emerging to places where Many people have been vaccinated because they are becoming Hosts for new mutation. Who knows what is in there really? As for holidays this summer, the young, strong, healthy will not allowed to travel, please realize that the plan IS to spread the variants all over the world, the vaccinated will do it!.. Not the other way around! to keep us locked forever due to the variants, and gradually to be directly connected with machines, 5G and the Internet of Bodies.. wake up please! I am all in for less and less technology, medicines, world organizations and puppet governments..