“Health is politics, politics is health” Rudolph Virchow (1821- 1902)
I wrote this post in October 2021, I did not publish it as the wheels started to come off the vaccine rollout. The vaccine was not 95% effective, they hopped boosters might help, they did not. Politicians Like Joe Biden and Boris Johnson had staked their political careers on them. The Omicron variant came along, a convenient excuse as to why the vaccine was not stopping the pandemic. On the up side less people were dying, the politicians overruled the science telling everyone to get “boosted” to protect themselves. The reality was as happened over thousands of years, “natural selection” is cruel and the most vulnerable who get exposed to aggressive infections, don’t survive. The Pharmaceutical industry convinced many overweight politicians, hardly paragons of healthy life styles, that the vaccine prevented the vaccinated getting seriously ill, but in 2020 when the pandemic started, healthy people as a rule did not get seriously ill. The average age of those dying was 83 and most had underlying health condition. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, but it should be kept in mind because someone does not have symptoms, does not mean they are healthy and if their immune system was unable to cope with covid there was something wrong with them. I suspect the people working in the British Government were aware of this when one considers the parties and social interactions going on there during 2021
I am 65, I did not have the covid vaccine. My wife and children all decided to have it under the coercion, which is a separate story in itself as they all have had covid multiple times, I only had it once, after spending five hours bing watching Tedd Lasso with my daughter so I would get infected to qualify for a Covid pass to visit my son in Denmark. Of course I was frighten in January 2020 as stories came out from China and Italy, but as I assessed all the information, I came to a very different conclusion to all the PR people for the pharmaceutical industry, who were influencing politicians they lobby. I did not publish anything at the time, because like everything in clinical science no one can predict what will happen, even though I had an idea as there are similar stories to tell with most vaccines and hindsight is a great thing.
In 2018, I did an interview with a Sunday newspaper about my “healthy” children who had never had any kind of medicine. Which caused a bit of a media storm, because the heading of the article stated I had ‘refused medicine” when my children were sick, when the truth was my children are very healthy and did not “need” medicine, the times they were sick, which was the same for most children born before 1970.
A BBC “Health” expert a GP Doctor Rosmary Sutherland, could not get her head around the fact a child with a temperature did not need medicine, and was not sure of the purpose of a raised temperature. I was letting my “children suffer” and might even be “neglecting” them, she said? A perfect example of reductionist medicine, absence of symptoms represented health in her mind and the best way to keep children healthy was to vaccinate them. I was reminded of a study which was done in the seventies which needs to be done again. They compared the nutritional knowledge of GPs with their receptionists. There was little difference between the two groups unless the receptionist had a weight problem, those receptionists scored significantly higher than the GPs.
The Mailonline described me as having “banned” medicine, I have never baned my children from doing anything allowing them to make their mistakes and learn. I was then asked to bring the children on to “Good Morning Britain” (GMB), instead, I offered to debate one of their “experts” on the program. One has to remember the media represents the establishment view of the world. The establishment pays for advertising and viewers buy their products, so I had a fair idea of what to expect. My intention was never to convert, viewers of GMB, to my way of thinking, I don’t know what is best for every man woman, and child in the UK, but they think they do. I only know what is best for myself and my children from observation and experience.
Obviously, the intention of the two presenters and Dr. Hilary Jones, was to nail their “guest” to the floor, for viewer entertainment (that was never going to happen). But I wanted to talk about health and wellbeing which is my area of expertise, they wanted to talk about disease and illness, which is the Doctor’s. At one point Kate Garroway (one of the “objective presenters) sneered at me, why do you think you know more than the Doctor, who spent “six years studying”, how to treat disease after health has broken down. He might as well have been an expert in astrophysics,for its relevance to my healthy children.
Of course, if I get hit by a bus I want to be taken to a hospital, if I or my children have a “serious” illness, I want them to be given the best care medicine has to offer. In fact, when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2011, it was the Royal Marsden, I turned to. This fact did not seem to register with Dr. Jones, or the presenters. In their head and the narrative they wanted to share with their viewers, I was “anti-modern medicine”. A pejorative term aimed at anyone who questions the medicalisation of people’s health and a stupid thing to say, which will resonate with the biomedical tribe. Then when I told viewers I had stopped chemotherapy after it had not worked and taken cannabis, (expecting them to say, that’s amazing) it became. “You take medicine yourself but won’t give it to your children”; It was like talking to the wall. Yes, my physiology needed help to recover from cancer, the children did not need any help.
The Doctors attitude motivated Ivan Illich to claim in 1974; “The medical establishment has become a major threat to health; He stated; “The true “miracle” of modern medicine is diabolical. It consists of making not only individuals but whole populations survive on inhumanly low levels of personal health. That health should decline with increasing health-service delivery is unforeseen only by the health manager, precisely because his strategies are the result of his blindness to the inalienability of health. ……..a society that can reduce professional intervention to the minimum will provide the best conditions for health. The greater the potential for autonomous adaptation to self and to others and to the environment, the less management of adaptation will be needed or tolerated”
The dominant ethos in the medical profession since the 70s has been anti-Illichian. Doctors, patient groups, politicians, and the pharmaceutical industry formed a broad consensus that more medicine, more healthcare, could only be a good thing. Academic medicine, so powerful in shaping opinion, has developed a relationship with ‘industrial partners’ that is unhealthily close and uncritical. Modernists embrace rationalism and science, the idea that science, technology, and social innovations can and should lead to intrinsic improvements in the human condition. However this philosophy of “progressive scientism” has caused global warming, destruction of ecosystems and the not so obvious impact on public health This generation of children is the first in history to have lower life expectancy than their parents and much of that blame must be on politicians prioritising GDP over peoples wellbeing. Health” services have little to offer healthy people, just waiting for them to present and treat the symptoms by removing some abnormal tissues, or putting in some chemicals to make the symptoms go away.
Members of the media and politicians tend to view medical academics and scientists ( who tow their line) as paragons of health virtues, even though they probably know less about the health and well being of children than your average PE Teacher. Doctors are members of the public, who had good A level results, which got them into Med school. Their lifestyles are the same as ordinary people and they die from the same diseases. Yes some might be interested in a healthier lifestyle and exercise, but that has little to to with their work, if the vending machines in hospitals are anything to go by.
There has been an exponential increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes in recent years, which puts people at risk of many diseases especially variants of the Corona virus. When people see these products in a hospital setting they assume is ok to by them in the supermarket. In 2019/20 there were more than 1 million hospital admissions linked to obesity in England, an increase of 17 per cent on the previous year. Many of the same people were ending up in hospital in 2020/21 and their illness had a new name “Covid 19”.
People ask why I have not written anything about the Covid vaccine on this blog? The decision on how best to protect ones health is different for everyone, depending on their age, state of health and circumstances, which influences the risk from all infections including respiratory infections like Covid. Now eighteen months into the pandemic, we have more information, in fact, the pandemic has only confirmed the conclusion of my Masters dissertation. Vaccines are a cost-effective method of disguising health inequality, as its much cheaper to compensation claims for injuries than to correct the social conditions that make people vulnerable to most infectious diseases. This pandemic has created awareness around the different risks from vaccines and medical people are talking seriously about natural immunity, which is 27 times more effective than vaccine immunity. Nevertheless “vulnerable” people who get respiratory infections, are at high risk and should be protected, as well as we can without putting healthy people at risk to do so.
The public rely on opposition politicians and journalists to ask sensible questions of the Government, to help inform their health decisions. What we were seeing on TV in early 2020 was scary and the UK soon had the highest death rate of any developed country. After many strategy errors, the public was presented with a fait accompli. “Get vaccinated” or people will die; “Get vaccinated” or loose your job. “Get Vaccinated” or you can’t travel or go to any large gatherings; “Get vaccinated” as immunity from previous infection does not count. The politicians claim they are “following the science”; while in parliament, one side of the house is masked, the other without. California locks down, Florida does not, New Zealand closes its borders and schools. Sweden leaves everything open.
The mixed messages coming out of the mouths of the experts is confusing for the public and does nothing to help people make informed decisions. Take our GMB health expert Hillary Jones; Here he is telling people not to wear masks as they dont work and increase infections.
Question these contradictions on social media and have “Fact Checkers” telling you, their facts as written by corporate media. For this article, I am focusing on the contradictions, of the references are from “Main Stream Media” and Medical Journals.
The UK death rate from covid is 4 times higher than Denmark, 10 times higher than Norway, this is due to a number of factors. Having lived in Denmark and Norway for 12 years, I believe the principle reason for this difference is the hight rates of obesity and the exponential rise of Type 2 diabetes in the UK. In 2015, 58% of women and 68% of men were overweight or obese and its getting worse. If people feel the best way to protect their wellbeing is a covid vaccine and are happy to do it without any long term evidence of safety, they should do it.
Perhaps its time for biomedical scientists to show some humility, the human immune system has evolved along with viruses and bacteria over a million years. To continue to put crap into the systems much of which vets tell us is not healthy for our pets to eat and then expect our immune system to protect us, is asking too much. Perhaps its time to focus on the factors which compromise human health and wellbeing. The scientists solution is preventing our children’s immune system fighting off infections when there is plenty of evidence that fighting infections like colds and flus makes the immune system stronger. I asked Professor Adam Finn about this at a BMJ Masters conference about 15 years ago when he was trying to have the chicken Pox vaccine included in the vaccine programme. He believed the solution was; “eradicating all childhood illness with vaccines, to rapturous applause from the paediatricians in the lecture room. To be fair to Professor Finn he was much more guarded about giving the Covid vaccine to under 15s.
Bear in mind anyone born before 1963 has not been vaccinated against measles or mumps and have never needed boosters. Because every couple of years there was an epidemic, morbidity never decided but mortality rates did, in fact in one of the worst measles epidemics in 1959, out of 50,000 cases according to the British Medical Journal no one died. Measles virus is extremely infectious, like chicken pox everyone gets infected and has life time immunity ( yes it can be deadly for a very small group, especially those living in the developing world ). I was the first on our street to get measles and many parents brought their children to catch it off me because, as with covid it is generally better to have infections when you are young. In fact the British Medical Journal and media was advising this approach during the 1959 measles epidemic.
We have now reached a stage in many countries where it is not acceptable, for healthy adults to have natural immunity and their refusal to be vaccinated has them labeled by much of the media as “antivaxxers”. If these Journalists and politicians knew anything and were consistent they should attach this label to everyone born before 1963. A number of NBA players have decided not to be vaccinated which is acceptable to their team mates who have been vaccinated and would appear to have a better understanding of natural immunity than most politicians and journalists.
Now the pressure is being put on parents to have healthy children who are not at any risk from covid to have the vaccine. This approach is not only idiotic (as it suggests the vaccine is not very effective for those who have had it), it is a breach of the “The Nuremberg Code”; the most important document in the history of the ethics of medical research.
The Code was formulated 50 years ago, in August 1947, by American judges after they had sentenced Nazi doctors for crimes against humanity. The Code serves as a blueprint for today’s principles that ensure the rights of subjects in medical research. The preamble of the code specifically states that politicians can not; “justify their views on the basis that such experiments yield results for the good of society that are unprocurable by other methods or means of study”. The Code begins by stating;
“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential”
This means that, the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to “exercise free power of choice”, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or “other ulterior form of constraint or coercion”; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision”. If you already know this and agree with “coercing” people to be vaccinated, you are no better than those who accepted the Nazis doctrine in the 30s and 40s.
Their are some who might argue, the vaccine rollout is not an experimental procedure and the code does not apply; weasel words! Pfizer and Moderna, mRNA vaccine is a new technology, never been used on humans before, Astra Zeneca is more like a traditional vaccine. Normally in clinical research a drug or vaccine will go through Phase I, II and III trials, before coming to market, for these vaccines all the phase 1 and 2 studies were positive.
On the 27 of July 2020, Pfizer began their phase three trial, which runs for 2 years. On November 18 (114 days later), Pfizer Published the initial findings of the phase three trial, in a press release announcing the vaccine was safe and 95% effective. On December 10 Pfizer published another press release stating; That their study had been published in The New England Journal of Medicine and that “FDA is expected to make a decision on Emergency Use Authorization in the coming days“.
There are a number of statements in this press release which were ignored by the worlds corporate media
- The “ongoing” Phase 3 clinical trial of BNT162b2, is based on BioNTech’s proprietary mRNA technology
- The Phase 3 trial is designed as a 1:1 vaccine candidate to “placebo”, randomised, observer-blinded study to obtain “safety” data, needed for regulatory review
- The diclosure Notice; This release contains forward-looking information about Pfizer’s efforts to combat COVID-19, the collaboration between BioNTech and Pfizer to develop a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the BNT162 mRNA vaccine program …… involving substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including the ability to meet anticipated clinical endpoints, …….,
(it should be remembered, the placebo the Pfizer vaccine was being compared with for “safety” purposes was another licensed vaccine, not benign saline (as long as the vaccine does not have significantly more side effects than the placebo, it is considered safe). How effective the vaccine is against the delta variants is purely speculative and pushed by politicians more out of hope than “science”. And why in September 2021 even the FDA could not support the use of booster shots for healthy individuals in the US
If I was in my 80s or had underlying health problems, putting me at greater risk from Covid I probably would have the vaccine. However being a healthy 64 year old, there are many things I can do to improve my immune systems ability to deal with infections, so I chose not to have a covid vaccine, nor did I not have the flu vaccine in 2013, while having chemotherapy for terminal cancer. The fact I am still here and clear of cancer, having refused more chemotherapy, might suggest I know my own body better than pharmaceutical sales reps. My partner has had the vaccine, as have the vast majority of my friends and patients, they believe it offers them some protection and if they do get infected their illness will be milder. But if the vaccine does not protect them from me, it is not going to protect me from them.
Eighty percent of the of Israeli population are double vaccinated. In August/September 2021 Israel had one of the highest covid infection rates in the world in its 4th wave, worse than in June 2020 at the peak of their second wave, which was before the vaccine. Reports say 50% of those in hospital are not fully vaccinated. Which in Israel means they have not had the third booster vaccine and no longer qualify for the vaccine passport. They are now saying people may need a fourth and fifth a booster, even every 6 months, as they are not sure how long before immunity wanes, as it appears there are three groups of immunity; 1)Those who were infected and have natural immunity, 2) those that have vaccine immunity and 3) those who were infected and also had a vaccine. All groups had different immunity, but first group whose immunity began to wane, was the vaccinated group.
I am well aware of the risks from covid. I watch TV, I knew two people who died having tested positive, one lady was morbidly obese, the other had lupus. I also know two healthy people who had heart attacks within days of having the vaccine, which does not get so much media attention. In clinical science it is very difficult to show cause of death without an autopsy. But if we are going to count every death that tests positive for covid as a “covid death”, it is only reasonable to call every death after the vaccine a “vaccine death”. More than 380 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through September 13, 2021. During this time, The US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), received 7,653 reports of death (0.0020%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. and while 0.0020% is a tiny percentage, I would like to know how many of the 7,653, would have been at high risk of dying from covid?
To reduce my risk from Covid infection, I maintain a healthy weight, eat lots of fruit & veg, don’t drink alcohol ( I exercise outdoors every day and try to have 8 hours sleep each night. Probably most important of all I live in an affluent area of London suburbs with relatively low death rates compared with deprived areas. As always its the poor that suffers most from infectious disease. Two of my grandfathers siblings died in the Spanish flu of 1918, my maternal grandfather died from TB in 1935. My mother grew up in abject poverty in Ireland, she was very successful, but never forgot where she came from and the health issues the poor have to cope with and why vaccines might help these communities, but at the same time hide the inequality and political decisions that keep the poor, poor. so when scientists from Public Health England published deaths, they focused primarily on age which seemed to be the principal risk factor. As if each age group was a homogeneous group. The fact that it is estimated that 1% of people in their eighties died from covid, means 99% did not. Could be they were self isolating, but for the majority who passed away after testing positive for covid, it would be because they were old and frail. Even fully vaccinated an 80 year olds risk of dying from covid is the same as unvaccinated 50 year old, who more than likely had underlying conditions. For example Bill Shakespeare the first man to be vaccinated passed away from an unrelated illness in May 2021 this generation is vulnerable to any illness.
How strong someones immune system is or the vaccine are the main factors which will determine how sick someone gets, not whether your politics are left or right or libertarian. Sadly the politicians have used the pandemic to promote various political ideologies, ignoring the primary factors that impact peoples health and wellbeing. As we have seen, pandemics impact the GDP of countries and dividends paid to shareholders of big multi national corporations. Vaccines are a relatively inexpensive intervention, keep people at work, children in school and why governments all over the world like them and grant injury exemptions to vaccine producers.
On December 8 2021, University Hospital, Coventry, began the “vaccine rollout” in the UK. Matron May Parsons administered the very first injection to 91 year old Margaret Keenan. After 12 months of not very successful outsourcing to the private sector, the UK government put the “vaccine rollout” in the hands of the NHS, their workers and volunteers. A government now claiming to have “saved the NHS”, despite 10 years of underfunding, wished to bask in the glory. The media coverage of the event reminded me of Neil Armstrong’s; “a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind”, which perhaps says more about our corporate media than the event itself.
To be fair the actual rollout was amazingly successful and just goes to show what could be achieved, if politicians attached the same sense of urgency to tackling climate change, air pollution, social care, or type two diabetes, which are bigger drains on NHS resources than covid ever will. I suspect the corporate lobbyists, in the food and energy industries would not be best pleased.
This Covid vaccine was claimed to be 95% effective, but it was never clear what it was effective at, which gave the politicians some wiggle room for polemic, as the rollout went into full swing and infection rates were rising ( the vaccine was designed for slightly different variant). For example for many years GPs believed whooping cough had been mostly irradicated, due to the whooping cough (pertussis bacteria) vaccine, but in in 2006 they discovered; 85.9% of children who tested positive for whooping cough were fully vaccinated a more recent study from 2014 found the figure had dropped to 20% this could be because the pertussis vaccine was changed in 2005, also that vaccine immunity wanes over time and is not as effective as natural immunity.
In 1963 a measles vaccine was licensed and the medical narrative about measles changed from a “mild infection”. The reported children lives were now at risk, if they did not have the vaccine. The focus was now on the small group of children harmed by measles (mostly living in the third world). These were the children ending up in hospital who doctors would see and base their public health opinions on. While the vast majority of children in the developed world had measles without major problems and life time immunity and no need for boosters. An interesting study published in the Medical journal Thorax showed adults who had measles as children were significantly less likely to have asthma which kills thousands each year. It may also be true, were vaccinations to stop now, children immune systems have been so compromised by the medicalisation of their health, they could not cope with what were once described as “normal childhood illnesses”.
In the 80s and 90s a number of vaccines had to withdrawn, because researchers were looking for problems, newspapers often reported stories about children who had been injured by vaccines. That changed in 1998 after Andrew Wakfield suggested in a study, that there might be a link between the autism 13 of his patients developed and the new MMR vaccine (The Urabe MMR vaccine had to be withdrawn in 1992)
Wakefields studies, were case studies, which the media reported as “causation”, he was struck of the medical register, for failing to get consent for taking blood samples in the control group of his study, not for making the suggestion, but questioning vaccines is not a good career move for any researcher. I remember in 2004 when the five in one vaccine was introduced, a patient told me how she took her child for a second booster jab for the four in one vaccine. As they entered the nurse told the mother, the child was going to get the new “five in one” vaccine which had just been introduced to the vaccine program; “it was much “safer”.
The mother was furious because no one had ever informed her that there were any risks associated with the four in one vaccine, given to the infant eight weeks earlier. They left the surgery and that was the last time they ever considered a vaccine. I am sure vaccines are improving all the time, but there is no incentive for scientists to find problems. Its up to patients to bring it to the attention of their GP and he has to fill out a yellow card reporting system for reporting adverse reactions. The vast majority of people believe “safe” means no risk and have no idea the condition developing before their eyes might be related to a vaccine ( In 2000 Sally Clarke was convicted of murdering her her child who died three hours after receiving the DTaP vaccine ). It is not in a researchers interest to go looking for rare adverse events in vaccines, especially if they are relying on someone to fund their research. The Pharmaceutical industry is not liable for injuries associated with vaccines. Providing vaccines is a political decision.
it is one of the areas of politics both the right and left agree on 100% but for completely different reasons, which will become apparent later. A person can claim up to £120,000 from the UK Government if they are seriously injured by a vaccine. The family get nothing if the child dies. In the UK out of 6,328 claims made, 940 people have been given compensation, totalling £74,590,000 million. I have written about this on another post. Payments for vaccine injury have been made every single year, since the vaccine damage Payment Act was passed in 1979 except in years 2011,2012,2013 and 2014, after the conservative Government came to power and began their economic austerity programme. Was the Government just lucky, or they knew how hard it is for parents to prove vaccine injury, without funding for research.
You will often hear doctors and journalists repeat the mantra “absolutely no evidence”; for example; that covid-19 vaccines can affect the fertility of women or men, says new expert guidance; published by the Association of Reproductive and Clinical Scientists and the British Fertility Society. Of course there is no evidence as this statment was published in February 2021 two months after people began having covid vaccines. Absence of evidence is not evidence that the vaccine is safe for pregnant women. Scientists once said Thalidomide was safe.
Most journalists were probably good doing comprehension at school, but you don’t need to be a mathematician to work out the human gestation period is 9 months and the vaccine has not been in use 9 months. The honest answer would be; We don’t know, how the vaccine affects pregnant women or fertility at this stage and that is what journalists should be reporting. But to quote the most successful British football manager Alex Ferguson ever; “you can’t believe a word you read in the newspapers today“, because they make stuff up, to support a narrative an editor wants. A few years ago I did an interview with the Sunday People on why my children were so healthy, never having had any medicine. This morphed into father “bans” children from having medicine.
How many times have you heard; “we don’t know” come out of the mouths of the people informing you about Covid during the last 18 months. We certainly don’t know how the vaccines will affects children in the long term. In addition the covid vaccine was was not designed for the delta variant, and needs a number of doses to be “effective” as one dose of Pfizer is only 10% effective on the Delta variant On top of that many off these children will have immunity having tested positive or by having asymptomatic infection. Yet suspicion is the plan is to build up confidence in parents after the first jab and then give a second dose to children as they do in US. Yes serious adverse reactions to the vaccine are rare, but in children they do seem to happen after the second dose. Parents may be being being lulled into a false sense of security the same way you boil a frog. Put the frog in water let him feel comfortable and gradually turn up the heat.
The general consensus on the Covid vaccines, appears to be, they are effective at stopping vulnerable people getting seriously ill and dying, the virus does not care whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, it will infect everybody the same way and its the vulnerable who will suffer the most. In 2020 the average age of those who died after testing positive for covid was 82.4. The vast majority of younger people who got seriously ill had an underlying condition (or something that may not have been diagnosed ) and is a small percentage to the total number .
It is not in a viruses interest to kill its host as the virus also dies. The virus changed slightly to the Delta variant and appeared to be more infectious and the percentage of younger people getting infected grew. However the number of young people dying was not significantly greater, only the percentage of young in the total deaths was larger as the death rate fell.
You can make statistics suggest anything. On the 24 of July 2000 Concorde was the safest way to fly, on July 25 one hundred and thirteen people died in a crash and Concorde was the most dangerous way to fly. But statistically was still safe for people earning less than £50,000 as that would have reduced the number of deaths to Cabin crew. These are called confounders and can be included or removed to manipulate results There are many examples of this in clinical science
If you are concerned about the increase in infection rates of the delta variant in 2021, you have to bear in mind, for most of 2020, the UK was only testing people with symptoms. Many people testing positive are asymptomatic and would not have come up in stats last year. For many our first awareness of covid infecting British people was on the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship On February 5 2020, a man with symptoms tested positive for covid. There were 3711 people on the ship. At first no country would allow the people to disembark, so they had to remain on the ship for 6 weeks, yet 697 people were identified as being symptomatic and having covid, only 7 people died.
These findings tallied with a group of over 60s who I play football with. Thirty traveled to Portugal in early March for a football tournament, they were close together over 4 days. Soon after returning to UK, 11 developed symptoms, three were hospitalised and recovered. So fair to say from that point in time, I was not too concerned about getting covid or any of my teenage family being infected.
I followed the governments advice on social distancing, hand washing and mask wearing out of respect for others concerns. I continued to see patients who were in pain as all you can do online is tell people to put an ice pack on their back. Good clinicians, should want to know why a patient has a problem, whether its covid or back pain. Getting to the bottom of the “why” is the best way to help people, rather than just writing a prescription to dull the symptoms. They might as well drink a bottle of whiskey.
Some will say I am a “selfish anti vaxxer” and they are entitled to their opinion. What is selfish is not be willing to pay more tax to fund better public services; to spend too much time down the pub, getting fat eating kebabs and expecting young children to risk their heath to protect yours. I do realise that I could get infected with covid and die next week, but I would not dream of asking children to have a vaccine to protect me. No one knows who is going live or die each day, everybody is different.
One should gather as much information as possible and evaluate what benefits them against any risks. I have been in the company of people who tested positive a number of times, I coach football to about 60 primary school children each week, I also have three teenage children. I have been tested many times, all negative. I may have been infected and not realised and developed immunity. I suspect most people under 30 who have not been vaccinated have some natural immunity and natural immunity from covid is stronger than vaccine immunity. A Lancet study has the effectiveness of previous infection at 84%. So let healthy children get infected and develop ” herd immunity” naturally.
Herd immunity was the original idea the UK government scientists had for dealing with the pandemic on 13 March 2020. However the WHO was critical of this approach. Two days later Neil Ferguson predicted the herd immunity approach could cost 500,000 lives.(this did not happen in Sweden who followed the herd immunity approach , kept schools open and had a much lower death rate than the UK. The politicians did not really know what to do and took a punt. On March 17 Sir Patrick Vallance the Governments chief scientific adviser announced the Governments “suppression” plan; shutting down social life in Britain and ordering the most vulnerable to isolate for 12 weeks. He hoped these measures the UK will have below 20,000 deaths from the outbreak. Vallance said the impact of the measures on the number of infections should be seen in two to three weeks. Based on the modelling being used by the government. They completely underestimate how many people were already infected with covid, failed to protect the vulnerable and there was no PPE in many care homes and hospitals, at one point the prime minister was telling the public that masks increased infection and you did not need them, or that it was ok to shake hands . The death rate passed 20,000 four weeks later.
Two incidents particularly frightened the public, especially the way they were reported and set the corporate media’s tone for the pandemic. An overweight Boris Johnson tested positive and was admitted to ICU and the death of 13 year old Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, an apparently healthy 13 year old boy. The Media stated, it was covid that killed him , it was on the front page of every newspaper and news bulletin. The reality is Mohamed’s was stressed, his father died a month earlier, he was put on a ventilator in hospital , his family was kept away, he suffered a cardiac arrest and died.
But the fear seed had been sown and parents were terrified for their children. By September 2020 it was apparent that covid posed little risk to heathy children, as infection rates soared among “affluent children and young adults” who made the most of the The Eat Out to Help Out Scheme one of the Government’s policy measures aimed to support businesses reopening after the COVID-19 lockdown period. Matt Hancock then warned the young people about “killing Granny”. Nevertheless the Government still sent students back to university towns, to infect those residents. Students accommodation is usually in poorer areas, full of pensioners, but this was secondary to students enrolling in their courses so university fees could be charged at full rate, even though most lectures were done online.
The pandemic was an opportunity for journalists and politicians, to speak about improving public health and wellbeing. Instead of having a sensible debate, it became a vehicle for the entrepreneurial spirit of neoliberal political theory. The price of PPE went through the roof as conservative party donors were given £billions worth of contracts without any tender. For some covid presented business opportunity that had nothing to do with public service but generating profit. Contact tracing was once advertised as the centrepiece of the government’s strategy for managing the pandemic. The coronavirus would be held at bay and other nations would be in awe at Britain’s “world-beating” system. It took the best part of a year to get going, by July 2021 there were 619,000 people isolating because they had been “pinged” even though many had not even breathed the same air, as the person who had tested positive
A report,published by the Commons Public Accounts Committee, struggled to find evidence that NHS test and trace has made a significant difference in reducing transmission. The £22bn spent of a £37 bn budget is hard to justify in the absence of proof that it worked. The problems identified in the report are manifold. Test and trace relied too much on expensive consultants and temporary staff. It did not engage properly with existing public health institutions – councils and primary care bodies – missing the opportunity to use their experience and expertise.
I find it hard to believe Tory ministers did not know, there was already a group of people who were very well prepared to help the government’s tracking efforts – the NHS workers who carry out contact tracing in cases of sexually transmitted infections. It began in the 50s and ramped up in the 80s when AIDS was frightening everybody. The UK’s network of sexual health clinics is unique as a locally embedded public health infrastructure with experience in contact tracing operations. Together with Environmental Health and Health Protection Departments, these should have been an ideal basis for a new system to track coronavirus. Germany used previously underfunded local health offices in its much-praised coronavirus response. The British Government used Serco, where revenues rose 19 per cent to £2.17billion in the six months to the end of June 2021. Pre-tax profits jumped 35 per cent to £103.7million
Who would continue to do business with a company that in 2019 was fined almost £23million in a settlement with the Serious Fraud Office over claims it had overcharged the government for electronic tagging. A company that was criticised after it emerged that its breast-cancer screening hotline – set up after some 450,000 women did not receive due invitations to attend important screenings – was being run by call handlers with only one hour’s training.
Then vaccine technology came to the rescue of the most incompetent British government in my life time. To convince the British public that he was doing a good job, Boris Johnson the Machiavelli of British politics, did what he often does when in a jam; threw a dead cat on the table; the “anti vax movement”; a cacophony of opinions (hardly a “movement”), people who put a lot of effort to being healthy, to followers of Donald Trump, conspiracy theorists, people who had loved ones injured by other vaccines etc. The anti term, has antagonised many people with genuine concerns, the way calling brexiteers idiots for voting “leave”, brought diverse groups from left and right together. The “anti” rhetoric has probably damaged future vaccine campaigns. The vaccine cabal has now, stopped using the term anti and converted it to “vaccine hesitancy” like we are all a bit dim and slow to catch up.
The fact I own this domain, would suggest I have been been ahead of the curve on the subject of vaccination and its role in reducing morbidity of infections diseases for many years. Whether vaccines make people healthier is an entirely different discussion and the two often get conflated, by politicians whose public health ambitions are simply absence of infectious diseases.
Ten years of Tory austerity policies in UK. reduced living standards for many putting them into poverty, by reducing the support network provided by public services, they made poor people extremely vulnerable to this virus. Higher social deprivation is a risk factor for death from COVID-19 on a continuous scale, with two to three times the risk in the most disadvantaged 20% compared with the least. Similarities exist between the social gradients in COVID-19, influenza/pneumonia and cardiovascular disease mortality rates. We have known this since the 1980 “Black Report” highlighted the the problems with health inequality in society. The report was buried by Margaret Thatchers Government, committed as she was to the economic theory of free market capitalism. Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagen in the US, created a symbiotic relationship between the corporate media, business and the political establishment.
Poverty and health inequality, is what drove the Cuban revolution. The first health intervention Fidel Castro introduced on coming to power was a mass vaccination campaign, for malnourished children who didn’t have access to clean water outside of Havana. Infant mortality rates dropped significantly in a very short space of time. Cuba is a great example of a very successful vaccination campaign for a particular group of vulnerable people. They also put doctors and nurses in rural areas and conducted a massif literacy campaign. To this day Cuba has higher literacy rates than either US or UK, yet they would demonise the country, that did exactly what the US and its allies failed to do in Afghanistan.
Neoliberal economic policy turned Kabul into a modern city for 4 million people ( the narrative the media shares with us, as if Kabul was Afghanistan in its entirety). The other 35 million Afghans in rural areas are left without health care and are largely illiterate. They were left to chose their poison after 20 years of US occupation; The Taliban or corrupt politicians in hoc to the American weapons industry ( business not conspiracy) There are many reasons Fidel Castro outlasted nine US presidents, but the main one is what I heard him say, while I was working there in 2000 “we are a poor country, but we die of rich country diseases” (Putting people before profits). In developed countries vaccines hide the health inequality and deprivation. Compare the UK governments enthusiasm for vaccines, to their reluctance to provide 1.5 million British children with free school meals. or build a third runway at Heathrow when air pollution kills 64,000 a year.
The most profitable market for vaccines is in developed countries, in September 2021, many developed countries were about to embark of giving a third booster, While only 0.9% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. Politically the optics of international health inequality is not damaging, the way thousands dying in the inner city is, the people who drive our trains and busses, clean out schools and hospitals. They can vote and blame blame their social problems on immigrants and socialists wasting the little tax they have to pay.
According to the World Health Organisation, the two public health interventions that have had the greatest impact on the world’s health are clean water and vaccines. Which begs the question, why does the WHO encourage the privatisation of water services throughout the world, while vaccines are provided for free, with no liability on the manufacturers for any injuries caused by vaccines. It would take an entire book to answer this question; fortunately there is one written by my former professor at Brunell University, Theodore H MacDonald; “Sacrificing the WHO to the Highest Bidder” Published in 2008.
Theo describes the privatisation of water as; “part and parcel of the link between short term neoliberal policies and the whole issue of environmental sustainability generally. The agencies ( UN, WHO, IMF; et al) that were set up to protect and defend health and other human rights globally have themselves become increasingly complicit in trading off our long term requirement for environmental sustainability generally, for the short term financial requirements of neoliberal corporate power.
An example of this Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, a former chairman and CEO of Nestlé, a multinational food and beverage company that boasts annual sales of bottled water in the billions very year, once declared that water is not a human right, it is a human need. These corporations are very sensitive to public opinion, they buy advertising in corporate media, to keep the journalists onside and Nestle spin it as they are a very caring company Least we forget in the 70s Nestlé’s advertisements insinuated that drinking infant formula instead of breast milk would make children “healthier, happier, and stronger”. To promote their product, Nestlé developed close relationships with local hospitals and healthcare professionals. This was particularly problematic in third world countries, where many did not have access to clean water and children died.
A PR problem for Nestle is a business opportunity for another member of the corporate elite; Frances Veolia; the worlds biggest water provider. When a poor country needs money, they go to the IMF, who tell them they can have the money, provided they privatise the water supply (Structural Adjustment Policies) This allows one of the many big water companies into the country claiming to provide clean drinking water to the people. As is often the case, the water is used to water the politicians golf course rather than for the poor to drink. In addition the money might have been loaned to a corrupt leader, who puts much of it in a Swiss bank account. The leader gets booted out of power, goes into exile, lives off the money he squirrelled away. The IMF does not care because its the country that owes the money. The loans are restructured again and again, but the repayment plans of many developing world countries does not even cover the interest while the countries resources are in the hands of multi national countries as has happened in Iraq and will happen in Venezuela if EU and US get their way. The corporate media will tell you its about “human rights”, of their people. The US is the richest country in the world and 38 million of its citizens (12%) live in poverty, 12 million of them are children and no-one gives a shit about their human rights. No one is telling them they would be better off living in Cuba, with access to free health care and education. The white poor, in US have been brainwashed into believing their problems are due to Socialists and minorities of colour, who want to take away their guns and ‘free speech”. Covid does not care whether you are Republican or Democrat, left or right, it will infect all equally but how the immune system responds depends on each individuals state of health.
On September the 13 the UK government announced, they are “offering” the covid vaccine to children, even though the JVCI in the UK did no recommend giving it to children The JCVI stated: “For the vast majority of children, SARS-CoV-2 infection is asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and will resolve without treatment. Of the very few children aged 12 to 15 years who require hospitalisation, the majority have underlying health conditions. There is evidence of an association between mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis. This is an extremely rare adverse event. The medium- to long-term effects are unknown and long-term follow-up is being conducted.”
I did the dissertation for my Masters in health promotion on “Informed Consent’ and the DTaP vaccine. 78% of people questioned did not know what the vaccine was for compared with 6% for MMR and this was due mainly to media coverage of controversy surrounding the MMR in 2000, rather than information given prior to receiving a vaccine. In America a far more litigious society than UK, people get far more information in “Vaccine Information Statements”(VIS) which covers most possible side effects including the rare possibility of serious brain damage and death. Vis have not been published for Covid vaccines because they have been granted emergency use authorisation (EUA) were rushed to market and there is no data on long term side effects for adults or children.
If any good has come out of this pandemic it is has made people aware of the importance of having a strong immune system and when it comes to Vaccines; “safe” does not mean risk free. No matter how risk is framed; a one in a million risk is 100% if its your family. Yes catastrophic risks are relatively rare, which is what proponents of vaccines have been focused on since the covid vaccines came to market, but that could be the tip of the iceberg, if you read through the other posts on this site, all well referenced you will find numerous examples of injury caused by vaccines.
One comment we constantly hear with regularity from politicians is that; “we are following the science” if scientists could predict the future, scientists would be putting the gambling industry out of business. Science is merely a tool to investigate and question, phenomena assumed to be true and science is constantly changing as humans and their environment evolve. You only have to look at British politicians in the Houses of Parliament on the Government side you can see all those podgy unhealthy looking faces on the opposition, the podgy faces are masked up masked up. Floriday loves Trump so they do nothing California hates Trump so they go to the other extreme. Interestingly similar demographic in both states similar death rates.
In January for political reasons, the government decided to ignore the science from pfizer that the 2 doses should be 3 weeks apart. The British Medical Association (BMA) wrote to the Governments chief scientific adviser. said it agreed that the vaccine should be rolled out “as quickly as possible” – but called for an urgent review and for the gap to be reduced. The doctors’ union said the UK’s strategy “has become increasingly isolated internationally” and “is proving evermore difficult to justify”. “The absence of any international support for the UK’s approach is a cause of deep concern and risks undermining public and the profession’s trust in the vaccination programme,” the letter said. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA, said there were “growing concerns” that the vaccine could become less effective with doses 12 weeks apart. The Government ignored the medical advice and the science for political reasons and guess what? In May a study from Birmingham University discovered that delaying second Pfizer vaccines to 12 weeks significantly increases antibody responses in vulnerable people. Luck not science may have saved many vulnerable lives, the British government claimed the figure to be 12,000, but again that number was just plucked out of the air, for political purposes.
In the right hands Science advances our knowledge of life, in the wrong hands it produces a nuclear bomb that kills half a million people in Japan. There are scientists who who for years claimed smoking was safe, no doubt influence by the fact the Cigarette companies spent so much money advertising in medical journals The food industry acted similarly with sugar, sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in Cardio Vascular Disease . Question is would the pharmaceutical industry mislead us in a similar way.
A listed company’s primary duty is to its share holders, not the companies customers and Covid 19 has been fantastic for Pfizer shareholders with 92% growth and $33.5 billion from covid vaccine sales. Moderna’s share price has risen 500% and was given a big boost due to the fact vaccine immunity wanes quickly and boosters will be needed. As with all good companies Moderna et al will do their best to pay as little tax as possible and contribute to the public services in the communities they serve. Even AstraZeneca is doing well, $15 billion of revenue, 26% growth. Their covid vaccine sales only accounted for $1 billion no doubt hampered by the fact they promised not to make a profit from their Covid vaccine.
When the Pfizer vaccine was first rolled out to the general population, some allergic reactions were picked up in patients, UK regulators, recommending against vaccination for people with a history of anaphylaxis due to allergies to food or medicine. CDC in America took the view allergic reactions were not a concern. Eight moths later, no doubt seeing a different picture as more diverse communities are vaccinated, stating that even after a mild allergic reaction to the first vaccine you should not have a second dose
The Astra Zeneca vaccine ( more like traditional vaccines) was also “safe”, much cheaper than the Pfizer vaccine and was going to be the main vaccine used in Europe. In the UK the vaccine rollout began with the Pfizer vaccine , any deaths associated with the vaccine were attributed to people being old and frail, which I always found odd, because since the start of the pandemic all deaths, were attributed to Covid regardless of the stage of any underlying illness the patient had. As the recipients became younger and healthier, a correlation with blood clots began to appear and on March 11 2021 most Scandinavian countries suspended the use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine At this point it is clear, there was confusion over the science and who should have the vaccine as countries made different recommendation for its use. South Africa not using AZ at all as their science reported it did not seem to have any impact on its variant.
The UK continued to use the Astra Zeneca and six weeks after its suspension in Scandinavia BBC reporter Lise Shaw had her vaccine and died from blood clots caused by the vaccine. In May the UK decided to only offer the AZ vaccine to those over 40, which would not have helped Lise shaw who was 44, even though the study looking to it said the vaccine affect all ages up to 65 ;”the investigators found a higher rate of venous thromboembolism in people receiving the vaccine than would have been expected based on general population rates. The increased risk was seen in all ages from 18-65 years, but there was a hint that any effect may be slightly greater in younger people.
Then in August we were told the risk of blood clots is similar in both vaccines. But the data also shows the risk of blood clods to be much higher in patients infected with covid who are in hospital. I have no doubt this is true, but you have to consider that those most at risk of ending up in hospital from covid in the general population, are older people, with underlying health problems which makes them vulnerable. While the risk from the vaccine would seem to be random among 18 – 65 year olds.
In June I sit down to watch Denmark play Finland in the Euros, Danish footballer Christian Eriksen fall over with a heart attach. He was an Inter Millan player and the club had been boasting how they were going to have all their players vaccinated before the Euros. I had read one of their other players Arturo Vidal had ended up in hospital after being vaccinated and developing tonsillitis and then testing positive for covid. so being Eriksen receiving CPR, my thoughts went straight to the vaccine and a patient of mine who had a massive heart attack a few weeks earlier after having his vaccine. Again we are told these are random events so when I heard that there is a small risk of pericarditis and myocarditis after mRNA vaccines my ear starts top prick up and these are the vaccines they will give to children. Yes these are all small risks, buy if you have a few flies, a few cock roaches, a few ants a few mice, it soon ads up to being a major problem and by 2022 we know the risk of Myocarditis is acknowledged in young health people (who were not at risk from Covid)after the second vaccine.
Since the Pandemic began you would be forgiven for thinking “Absence of Disease” is the goal of politicians and heath care professionals It is important to remember the medical profession is a diverse mixture of people and like the general population, they smoke drink and over eat while some do their best to remain heathy. This is how health and wellbeing should be defined and the political establishment failed miserably to apply any of this principles during the pandemic rather than coercing millions of people to have a vaccine that did not stop them getting infected or infecting others. The best way to protect oneself from infection is by embracing a healthy lifestyle and governments the world over should have been trying to help their citizens to achieve this, rather than enriching the pharmaceutical industry
- Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
- The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.
- The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent on the fullest co-operation of individuals and States.
- The achievement of any State in the promotion and protection of health is of value to all.
- Unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of diseases, especially communicable disease, is a common danger.
- Healthy development of the child is of basic importance; the ability to live harmoniously in a changing total environment is essential to such development.
- The extension to all peoples of the benefits of medical, psychological and related knowledge is essential to the fullest attainment of health.
- Informed opinion and active co-operation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of the health of the people.
- Governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures
