I have always been a big believer in vaccination, but all the renewed demands for lock-downs, lockouts, and other restrictions, are undermining my faith in the COVID vaccines. Either they work, and according to all of the research and information they are supposed to work very well, in which case, with more than 70% of people jabbed twice, and boosters being rolled out, there is no reason for continued restrictions, or else, if the restrictions are required, someone is not telling the truth about the efficacy of the vaccines! You can't have it both ways.
When I was a kid, there were still many diseases rampant that were far more serious than COVID. Large numbers of people continued to die, or be disabled for life, from Polio, Measles, Diphtheria, Smallpox, and so on. For adults, things like Mumps were still a major concern, and people were still suffering from T.B., as well as pneumonia, which I had twice as a kid. When I was about six, one of my friends' younger brothers died from meningitis. I had mumps, chickenpox, and other childhoods diseases, as a kid, which, given I also suffered with chronic bronchial-asthma, was not good. So, the roll-out of vaccines for a range of diseases, during that time, I saw as one of the great achievements of modern science.
One of the first great reliefs was being able to get the polio vaccine, and later at secondary school, the jabs against smallpox and T.B. In the years after, I made sure my kids got their jabs, as soon as possible. As soon as annual flu jabs became available, I made sure we all got them, and, later, when a pneumonia jab became available, my wife and I got that too.
So, it was obvious to me that the longer-term solution to COVID was going to be similar vaccination, probably on an annual basis. My concern was that, having failed to build up natural herd immunity amongst the 80% of populations not at serious risk from COVID, and the economic and social damage the stupid decision to go for lockouts and lockdowns instead was causing, the development and roll-out of vaccines could be rushed, corners cut, and any problem resulting from that would inevitably fuel all of the resistance to vaccines amongst some sections of the population, encouraged by all of the lunatic conspiracy theories of the anti-vaxxers.
In fact, the rapid development of vaccines, although there is evidence of corners being cut, in terms of testing, was highly successful in developing not just one, but a whole range of vaccines, by different companies. What is more, if the data on these vaccines is to be believed, they are even more effective in preventing ill-health than even are the flu vaccines. And, as a life-long believer in vaccines, I have, until now, had no reason to doubt what we have been told by scientists, and government about this efficacy of the anti-COVID vaccines.
We are told that the vaccines are more than 90% effective in preventing infection with COVID. That should really be in preventing that infection from being able to multiply in the body, as vaccines never prevent the body from being infected with a virus or bacteria, but simply enable the body's immune system to respond to that infection quickly, and destroy it before it can multiply to any degree. Even amongst the small proportion who do become ill, after being vaccinated, the data says that none of them become seriously ill, let alone die. The exceptions appear to be those like Colin Powell, who also have other serious illnesses, and immune systems that have been seriously compromised.
What is more, we are told that, in Britain, more than 70% of the population have now had both jabs, providing them with this very high level of protection. On top of that, we know that an even larger proportion of the population - between 80-90+ percent - also have COVID antibodies, as a result of natural herd immunity in addition to those who have been vaccinated. So, if everything that has been said about the efficacy of vaccines, and about the proportion of the population with such immunity is true, then the risk of serious illness, let alone death, for all these people is tiny. So, why then are the media, some scientists, and others once again demanding restrictions on the population, who, having put up with lockouts and lockdowns for nearly two years, did their bit by getting jabbed, and who were told that this was going to be the answer, and the means of their protection? That is simply not rational. It does not add up.
Either the vaccines work, and more than 70% of the population has immunity, or not. If we are being told that the problem is the proportion of the population who have not been jabbed, then I'm sorry, but penalising the vast majority to appease this irrational minority makes no sense, and is not supportable. In fact, on the basis that around 90% of the population has COVID antibodies, it makes even less sense. If 10% of the population refuse to get jabbed, they should not hold the rest of society to ransom, by their actions. Children are unaffected by COVID, so they can be taken out of the numbers, other than for that tiny proportion, who have immune deficiencies. But, for adults, all of whom have the option to get vaccinated, they have the choice as I said recently to either get jabbed, isolate themselves, or take the risk of being ill or dying. The burden does not lie on the rest of us to appease their irrationality. The damage to society, and of the economy, resulting from lockdowns and lockouts, which will last for years to come, is far greater on a much larger number of people, than any benefits to a tiny minority might provide.
That the media continue to demand lock downs and lockouts, and so on all over again is no surprise, because that has been the gift that keeps on giving as far as they are concerned in terms of sensationalist news stories. That some opposition politicians, and trades unions demand it as an opportunist means of attacking the government, and seeking to mobilise hostility towards it, especially on the basis of the inevitable economic distress that would result, is also understandable. That crude socialists like the SWP, who see any economic weakness as undermining capitalism, being somehow beneficial, is also understandable. But, why are scientists also joining that bandwagon demanding renewed restrictions? Either, they are covering their rear from any possible criticism, or it is again a matter of them being pressured into such an irrational stance by the pressure of media and public opinion.
Alternatively, it means that what we have been told about the efficacy of the vaccines is not true, and that would be a devastating truth for all of us who place such great faith in them. It would be the biggest single boost for the idiot anti-vaxxers, the conspiracy theorists and so on that could be imagined. It would undermine faith in vaccinations for decades to come. So I hope that that is not true, but I have to say that I am having great difficulty reconciling the facts that scientists are giving us on the one hand about the efficacy of the vaccines, the extent of vaccination within populations, and yet their renewed demands for restrictions.
The data seems to confirm the efficacy of the vaccines. The media, of course, continue to focus on the number of infections, rather than the number of people being hospitalised or dying. They also focus on rates of growth of infections rather than the actual number of infections. If one person is infected, and that goes to two, that is a 100% rate of increase, but if 100 people are infected and it goes to 110, that is only a 10% rate of increase. It doesn't change the fact that the latter is a much bigger problem than the former. The way the media present the data, in terms of time comparisons, also exaggerates, both the level of infections, and of deaths compared to the past, and that is what is to be expected from a 24 hour media, dependent upon sensationalising every news item. The same is true about the fact that they continue to present deaths of people WITH COVID as being deaths of people FROM COVID. As I pointed out months ago, the ONS data shows that, in fact, only around 13,000 people out of the 130,000, have died FROM Covid, the other 117,000 having died from something else, whilst having also had a positive COVID test. Many of them actually contracted COVID after having gone into NHS hospitals for treatment of these other conditions.
Virtually all of the people currently becoming ill or dying WITH Covid, are people who have not been jabbed. That the number of people dying at this time of year should increase is no surprise, for the simple reason that the number of people who die from all causes, at this time of year, begins to rise, and continues to increase during the Winter. It why the number of deaths is far more correlated to the time of year than it is to whether there is lockdowns or no lockdowns. So, again, I find it hard to understand why, given the actual data about such deaths, there is a support for lockdowns and other restrictions. On the one hand, that is not going to stop the normal increase in deaths of particularly elderly and sick people that happens every Winter, and nor is it of any relevance to everyone else, who has protected themselves by getting jabbed. Rather than calling for such restrictions, the emphasis should be on insisting that those not jabbed get jabbed, or take their chances.
Again, there has been a lot of talk about the situation in the South-West of England, where the existence of just one large NHS hospital means that any sharp increase in admissions cannot be dealt with. Well its supposed to be a NATIONAL Health service, not a regional, or county health service, so the simple immediate answer to that is for patients to be sent to other hospitals. More significantly it speaks against the policy of building overly large centralised single hospitals at the expense of a larger number of small hospitals, a decision made years ago, and which was done in the interests of the NHS bureaucracy, and its empire building tendencies, and of the medical-industrial complex, at the expense of patient care. Of course, any great calamity, would pose the same problems for the South-West, showing that the issue itself has nothing to do with COVID.
COVID has simply been a useful distraction for many issues, be it this fact that the NHS is not fit for purpose, that the UK's infrastructure is collapsing as a result of decades of under investment, or that Brexit has been a calamity for Britain on an epic scale. The demands for further lockdowns and restrictions again play into that as all of these facts begin to assert themselves once more, with widespread shortages and breakdowns.
So, I continue, for now, to believe that what we have been told about the efficacy of vaccines is true, and that, provided boosters are rolled out effectively for those that need them, we should continue to enjoy protection from the virus in the coming months. But, in that case, I cannot understand the calls from scientists for further restrictions; either the vaccines work, and its simply a question of rolling them out further, or they don't. The more the demands for further restrictions are made, the less confidence I have that what we have been told about that efficacy is true. In which case, that would mean that billions of Pounds spent on them was wasted, just as billions was wasted on useless testing and tracing systems that simply fed the profits of companies, many of which were linked to the Tories.
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