The vaccine is here. Now what?

JKR wrote:

Hallelujah!

Fully vaccinated Americans can drop the masks, skip social distancing

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WASHINGTON -- In a major step toward returning to pre-pandemic life, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has eased mask-wearing guidance for fully vaccinated Americans, allowing them to stop wearing masks outdoors in crowds and in most indoor settings.

"Today is a great day for America," U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday during a Rose Garden address heralding the new guidance, an event where he and his staff went without masks. Hours earlier in the Oval Office, where Biden was meeting with vaccinated Republican lawmakers, he led the group in removing their masks when the guidance was announced.

"If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask," he said, summarizing the new guidance and encouraging more Americans to roll up their sleeves. "Get vaccinated -- or wear a mask until you do."

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Thankfully Americans are turning into mature adults and are, in larger numbers, ignoring this advice and returning to normal activities regardless of whether or not they have been vaccinated.

Do you trust this man to be in charge of your medical records?

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Digital health passports will become “inevitable” in the UK and around the world as the public demand reassurance about coronavirus safety, Tony Blair has said.

Speaking to Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, the former Labour prime minister said that a document that combined vaccination and testing status would allow nations to defend themselves better against the virus.

Blair warned that the poorest at home and abroad were suffering most from continued lockdowns and urged Boris Johnson to use the UK’s hosting of the G7 summit to speed up the process of global cooperation on a standardised Covid-status “passport”.

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In his interview, Blair said that as vaccines rolled out across the world and countries moved to reopen their borders, digital health passports would be seen as an invaluable weapon in containing the spread of the virus.

“When you start to reopen your borders again, you’ll want to know the disease status of people coming into your country,” he said.

“Once vaccination really starts to be widespread, of course you’re going to ask for proof of what the vaccination status is and the reason for that is that the early evidence seems to be that if you’re vaccinated, you’re less likely to transmit the disease.

“And because of these new variants and because of the mutations that can occur, I think it’s just inevitable and therefore it’s best to start now on trying to devise common standards. If you start to do this on a vast scale, you’re going to need the technology that allows you to do it digitally.”

Blair, whose push for ID cards met with fierce civil liberties opposition when he was in office, suggested that a combined vaccine and test status document would have popular backing.

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Silkie Carlo, director of UK Big Brother Watch, said: “I think he has very little moral authority to talk on these issues and of course he was a champion of ID cards which the British public completely rejected and that’s really what a vaccine passport scheme could easily become.

“Let’s be very cautious of language like inevitability, which is often used by people with power to tell people without power, what they’re going to have.

“Vaccine passports would be discriminatory, they would be coercive, they would almost certainly lead to authoritarian identity systems. It could be the biggest expansion of the surveillance state that we’ve seen in western democracies.”

laine lowe wrote:

I also remember needing to update shots and get extra ones before travelling to Asia for an extensive period. And yes, I had that little yellow booklet that recorded my vaccine record. It was not a big deal. My only worry is if it is an impediment to citizens from poorer countries to get these kinds of record booklets together. As long as it is an even playing field globally, I have no problem with it.

The fact that covid primarily strikes people who are older should say a great deal about the direct impact the virus alone has in developing countries with shorter life expectancies (which is very small). Wishing for such a system to be set up equitably is fallicious, it is not going to happen. With the logistics of vaccinating the entire world for covid, it's going to take a long time before people in poorer countries have equal access. Furthermore, the vaccine manufacturers are private entities who expect to make money, and they are all to happy to hold world governments hostage. I wonder if the money many developing countries are spending on the covid vaccine would be better spent on more pressing health issues.

As always, Phil Shannon has an excellent piece:

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“Have you had your jab, yet?”, seems to have become the standard greeting these days whenever friends or colleagues gather. The Covid Hysterics amongst them will excitedly announce that they have had theirs or are counting down the days to the Big Jab whilst the Guardian-readers and BBC-watchers will smugly exude a self-satisfied aura of having done their bit as virtuous citizens to defeat the viral enemy whilst wearing the vaccine’s often debilitating side-effects as proud war wounds. The more aggressive of these will probably be belligerent towards those vaccine-refuseniks for being dangerous health miscreants and political troublemakers who are probably pining for Donald Trump. For all these ‘New Normals’, vaccine-shaming has become the new mask-shaming. How have we got to such a pass, where getting vaccinated has become a political purity test rather than a purely medical issue?

It all began with the virus itself as most governments and all establishment media, relying uncritically on Dodgy Brothers modelling, lost their collective minds over it, mistaking it for a visitation from the bowels of hell. Then came the ineffective, and damaging policy response as most governments hit the big, shiny, new self-destruct lockdown button, binning carefully thought-through respiratory virus pandemic planning in favour of copying neo-Stalinist China’s frenzied reaction. Then it was time for facemasks and the same crowd drooled over these useless, fear-promoting symbols of conformism. Along the way, each of these steps has been moralised, with the self-identifying ‘good’ people backing the official narrative at every turn and demonising the sceptics of the unscientific social distancing/lockdown/masking nonsense as ‘bad’ people, as uncaring selfish ‘Covidiots’. Now it is the turn of the vaccine, and it is getting the same treatment.

All Hail The Vaccine

The Covid vaccines have been enthusiastically embraced by all those stricken with virus hysteria and lockdown policy panic. For lockdown-addicted governments, the vaccines mean that they will never have to say they’re sorry for the ugly and pointless lockdown mess they created, including a police state, in their futile policy over-reaction. Now, through mass vaccination, governments hope, in theory, to end the lockdown cycle and save face without having to admit to the monumental error of strangling the economy, placing the healthy under house arrest and trashing traditional rights and freedoms.

Worldwide, government lockdown junkies have now become hooked on the drug of a Covid vaccine as a kind of methadone to wean themselves off the hard lockdown stuff. Government politicians love ‘deliverables’ and a smooth vaccine rollout is most definitely a hi-viz ‘deliverable’, a ready-made, feel-good data-filler for press releases and doorstop interviews, backed by a marketing blitz of a nation’s sleeves being rolled up as the long-awaited vaccination counter-offensive is launched after a year of retreat and siege. Even if vaccine rollout figures are lagging, the vaccine theatre allows governments to look good through robust crisis management and national ‘leadership’. The vaccines are primarily about political show, exactly as the whole misguided policy response to the virus has been from the off.

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The threshold vaccine question, which rarely, if ever, gets asked by Covid Hysterics, is ‘are Covid vaccines actually necessary?’. Short answer, no. According to a meta-analysis of some six dozen studies, conducted by Dr. John Ioannidis (Professor of Medicine, Stanford University), the global infection fatality rate for Covid is between just 0.15% and 0.20%. So, fewer than twenty out of every 10,000 people infected with Covid will perish with it (with even fewer dying from it since around 73% of those whose death is attributed to Covid die with the virus, not because of it). For people aged under 70 years, the infection fatality rate of 0.03% to 0.04% barely nudges their mortality needle.

Covid is thus in the same mortality ballpark as seasonal flu and way out of the league of the 1918-1919 Spanish flu whose infection mortality rate was estimated to be a much more serious 15%, a rate one hundred times more lethal and with a liking for the young, having a median age of victim of 28 years compared to Covid’s median age of victim of 82 years (bang on average life expectancy). We are not in Spanish flu, or Ebola (infection mortality rate 30%) territory, here, with Covid.

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Assuming, however, for the sake of argument, that a vaccine is, in fact, necessary for Covid, the key question then is do the current crop of vaccines actually work. Short answer, again, no. Pharmaceutical product manufacturers, government health regulators and even the WHO have been explicit (in the small print) that the vaccines have not been designed to do the basic job of a vaccine which is to make people immune and to halt viral transmission. In the UK, for example, the NHS leaflet that comes with the invitation to make a vaccination appointment puts it bluntly – “We do not yet know whether it will stop you from catching and passing on the virus”.

The entirely more modest claim of all the Covid vaccines is simply that they reduce the severity of non-serious symptoms of the disease caused by the virus. They make no claim to be effective in reducing serious symptoms – as the British Medical Journal has pointed out, none of the truncated vaccine trials were designed to detect a reduction in serious outcomes such as hospitalisations, Intensive Care Unit use, or deaths.

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The underwhelming trial data on vaccine efficacy is now being complemented by real world reports from the vaccine rollouts with many fully-vaccinated people still contracting Covid (so-called ‘breakthrough cases’) and, especially in closed environments like nursing homes, infecting others, vaccinated or not. The Covid vaccines may reduce the severity of non-serious symptoms in some people but they do not make anyone immune nor stop transmission.

So, why bother with them, unless you are the kind of person who falls asleep at night watching reality-distorting Covid specials on the BBC before a fitful night of Covid nightmares. All the Covid vaccines should come with a disclaimer similar to that for the worthless blue facemasks whose packaging includes the (legally-advisable) fine print that they ‘will not protect from Coronavirus or other viruses’.

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The safety of the Covid vaccines is questionable. They were recklessly authorised for emergency use based on only a few months of preliminary human trial data whilst the rollout itself is flagging numerous safety issues. Vaccine adverse event reporting systems in the US, EU and the UK indicate that Covid vaccinations have already been associated with around ten thousand deaths and with several more thousand non-trivial health reactions.

These officially logged adverse reactions are likely to be a major underestimate of their real incidence as the various vaccine reporting mechanisms are passive systems only (dependent on self-report), covering as little as around 1% of all reactions in the US (according to a US government-commissioned study by Harvard University) whilst the UK government’s website states that “it is estimated that only 10% of serious reactions, and between 2% and 4% of non-serious reactions, are reported”.

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The Covid vaccine adverse events are being recorded at significantly higher incidence rates compared to traditional virus vaccines. Whilst there are only two to three dozen vaccine-related deaths (from close to 200 million inoculations) related to the annual flu shot reported every year in the US, the Covid vaccines (currently with just one-third of the jabs compared to the flu vaccine) have notched up 2,600 reported deaths – a rate one hundred times that of the seasonal flu inoculations. The Covid vaccines represent the highest ratio of reported deaths per inoculation of any vaccine in US history. Something unusual is going on.

As vaccine defenders are quick to point out, however, association is not necessarily causation and the adverse events reported may not be related to the vaccination – they could simply be ‘coincidence’. It is noteworthy, however, that almost all the members of the vaccine fan-club are the very same Covid Hysterics who, when they were fanning hysteria about Covid mortality, went out of their way to dismiss the possibility of coincidence by directly inferring causation of any deaths which involved Covid in any way, no matter how incidental, to Covid as the underlying cause. For the Covid Hysteric, if a person dies from, say, gunshot wound or motor vehicle accident, within two months of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, they are a “Covid death”, no question about it, but a healthy person who dies within two days of getting the vaccine is merely a ‘coincidence’. Expect a wave of deaths by ‘coincidence’ as the experimental Covid vaccine rollout thunders on.

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One of the barrels of the roulette gun is loaded with the bullet of Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE), a clinical outcome that has sunk all previous attempts at launching any vaccine for a coronavirus. ADE is the exaggerated and potentially deadly over-exuberance of the vaccinated person’s inflammatory response (the “cytokine storm”, which attacks the healthy body itself) following any subsequent natural exposure to the coronavirus in the wild. In previous animal safety trials for vaccines for the SARS, MERS and Dengue Fever coronaviruses, for example, vaccinated lab ferrets, mice and civets later exposed to the natural virus keeled over at a great rate of knots. It is not known whether ADE will be a problem with the COVID vaccines because the relevant animal trials were skipped in the urgent political rush but the ADE history of its coronavirus vaccine peers would suggest an incipient problem.

Any future ADE bump in mortality related to the Covid vaccines will pose a conundrum for the vaccine lobby – if the ADE deaths are coded to Covid as cause of death (and, as the vaccinated body is manufacturing a part of the virus itself, any Covid test will be positive), then that will show how useless the vaccine is at providing immunity but if the ADE deaths are attributed to the vaccine that will show how dangerous the vaccine is. Good luck with the PR on that one, vaccine guys.

JKR wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

The only reason anyone should take the vaccine is if they've done the risk-benefit analysis and concluded that it is a benefit for their health. They shouldn't feel pressured to do so in order to participate in doing the things they love.

What about society as a whole?

How do you even determine what is good for society as a whole when there are competing interests between individuals and groups within the society? From a risk-benefit perspective, the vaccines might make sense for older people to take, but not for young people and certainly not for children. So how can you mandate taking the vaccine as being good for society?

I would argue that what's good for society as a whole is for individuals to have as much information as they can and to be free to make their own health decisions. People who are free to do as they choose are generally happier. People who are coerced can become resentful, and that can lead to serious social unrest.

JKR wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

How do you even determine what is good for society as a whole when there are competing interests between individuals and groups within the society? From a risk-benefit perspective, the vaccines might make sense for older people to take, but not for young people and certainly not for children. So how can you mandate taking the vaccine as being good for society?

Because it brings society closer to herd immunity without overloading the health care system and costing too many lives. It's a difficult balancing act. It's not either individual freedoms versus individual safety. It's about what's best for society as a whole as an aggregate which is a difficult balancing act.

Actually, yes it is. The only thing I'm concerned about when I decide what medical interventions to take is the impact on my health. Mandating people take certain medical procedures is very ethically fraught. Herd immunity is assisted by the fact that many people have been infected and recovered. The vaccine is not exactly a safe route to immunity either, since the number of vaccine related deaths and injuries reported in the US has literally jumped off the chart since covid vaccinations began rolling out.

JKR wrote:

That's why we don't have a communist system.

I can't travel to Kenora unless I convince the police officers who are stationed there that my reason for going is essential to them. If stores are too crowded, we have to stand in certain spots a certain distance away while waiting to go inside. We are restricted from visiting friends and family, and in some cases that is even banned outright. Religious worship is either banned or severely curtailed. If I go to many places, I am asked personal private questions about where I have been for the last 2 weeks and can be denied service based on said answers. Large public demonstrations are effectively banned, unless you follow rules that the government says you are allowed to do. How is that in practice different from what happens in authoritarian countries?

JKR wrote:

That's why we have individual freedoms enshrined in our constitution that can only be taken away under extenuating circumstances.

There's always an extenuating circumstance, just ask the government. Do you know what tends to happen historically when governments grant themselves emergency powers for long periods of time?

JKR wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

JKR wrote:

That's why we don't have a communist system.

I can't travel to Kenora unless I convince the police officers who are stationed there that my reason for going is essential to them. If stores are too crowded, we have to stand in certain spots a certain distance away while waiting to go inside. We are restricted from visiting friends and family, and in some cases that is even banned outright. Religious worship is either banned or severely curtailed. If I go to many places, I am asked personal private questions about where I have been for the last 2 weeks and can be denied service based on said answers. Large public demonstrations are effectively banned, unless you follow rules that the government says you are allowed to do. How is that in practice different from what happens in authoritarian countries?

JKR wrote:

That's why we have individual freedoms enshrined in our constitution that can only be taken away under extenuating circumstances.

There's always an extenuating circumstance, just ask the government. Do you know what tends to happen historically when governments grant themselves emergency powers for long periods of time?

I don't see our right to free and fair elections being taken away. I and most Canadians would not allow that!

You've stood for everything else thus far. Lockdown measures have already disrupted elections in Newfoundland and Labrador and in New Brunswick. The government is also seriously talking about adjusting this election because of the pandemic, for example allowing mail-in ballots to come in after the election date. I fully expect Trudeau to cheat whenever he can. If the Liberals can get enough of their supporters out to the polls early enough in the campaign, "targetted lockdowns" because of "localized spikes" can easily cause enough disruption to tip the result. Rembember when the Conservatives sent robocalls to divert voters in close ridings?

As for elections, there is so little difference public policy wise between all major parties that they really don't matter that much anyways. Once the Liberals get a majority and ram austerity through to pay up the debt they have racked up, there will be so little money left that there will be little the government can do anyways.

I do agree with you on one thing: If Trudeau does win a majority, I expect people will take to the streets to protest.

Seychelles locks down after successful vaccination campaign:

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The Seychelles, which has fully vaccinated over 60% of its population against Covid-19, is bringing back restrictions amid a rise in cases.

The archipelago of nearly 100,000 people recorded close to 500 new cases in the three days to 1 May and has about 1,000 active cases.

A third of the active cases involved people who had had two vaccine doses, the country's news agency said.

The rest had either had a single dose or were unvaccinated.

Schools have been closed and sports activities cancelled for two weeks. Bars, restaurants and shops are to close early and some gatherings have been banned.

If the vaccines work, why did they have to lock down again?

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I don't trust any private citizen to be in charge of my health records. That is why they are under the authority of the provincial government and subject to various layers of privacy laws. COVID related information getting out is no different than my mental health records or current vaccination records being hacked. As for vaccination booklets I guess since I remember having one as a kid it doesn't seem so weird. I also remember having to get a whole range of shots to go traveling in Asia and needed to carry proof of them to get into various countries.

laine lowe wrote:

I also remember needing to update shots and get extra ones before travelling to Asia for an extensive period. And yes, I had that little yellow booklet that recorded my vaccine record. It was not a big deal. My only worry is if it is an impediment to citizens from poorer countries to get these kinds of record booklets together. As long as it is an even playing field globally, I have no problem with it.

How about refugees? Should they have to be vaccinated as a condition of being allowed entry into Canada?

cco wrote:

There are varying degrees of justification for these – some withstand examination better than others – but putting them all into the category of "the government is dividing people, so it's the same as segregated washrooms and lunch counters" is preposterous, especially when the policy's goal is to get everyone vaccinated and thereby, were it to be successful, not discriminate against anyone.

I know that the policy is to vaccinate everyone. Why, if it is about public health, is the government threatening that we can't go about our lives and treating us like delinquent children by telling us what we can't do unless we are vaccinated? If the vaccine is that great, why not simply say, "the vaccine is here, it works," let everyone make their own risk assessments about the vaccine, and open things up and let life go on? Why is the government and the media making such a fuss over what should be a private medical decision?

Jay Bhattacharya recently dubbed Dr. Fauci the leading anti-vaxxer in the United States. Dr. Bhattacharya stated that since Fauci argues that the vaccinated still need to wear masks, do social distancing etc, that Fauci is communicating the message that vaccines don't really work.

Of course we can trust the regulators to look out for our best interests and make decisions based on safety:

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has moved from an entirely taxpayer-funded entity to one increasingly funded by user fees paid by manufacturers that are being regulated. Today, close to 45% of its budget comes from these user fees that companies pay when they apply for approval of a medical device or drug.

As a pharmacist and medication and dietary supplement safety researcher, I understand the vital role that the FDA plays in ensuring the safety of medications and medical devices.

But I, along with many others, now wonder: Was this move a clever win-win for the manufacturers and the public, or did it place patient safety second to corporate profitability?

It is critical that the U.S. public understand the positive and negative ramifications so the nation can strike the right balance.