Cassandra Voices

Tag: Vaccine Passports

  • COVID-19: Torches of Freedom

    ‘Harold Evans used to say that an investigation only really began to count once the readers – and even the journalists – were bored with it’
    Alan Rusbridger: who broke the news?

    In New York city on Easter Sunday 1929, in a premeditated move, a group of women brought the annual parade to a halt and proceeded to light up cigarettes. In a choreographed response, the tobacco industry, guided by the legendary Edward Bernays, re-branded cigarettes ‘Torches of Freedom’.

    This manipulated scandal had the desired effect of connecting smoking cigarettes with female empowerment. Within a few years, a woman’s ‘right’ to smoke had largely been conceded. Effectively doubling its market, the tobacco industry laughed all the way to the bank.

    Such an apparently spontaneous public spectacle is arguably the gold standard in advertising, wherein an avant-garde movement is associated with a product or service – all while the consumer is blissfully unaware. Importantly, radical or even rebellious social groups often inform mainstream taste, as with the popularity of so-called ‘ghetto styles’.

    This article explores how the pharmaceutical industry, in league with technology corporations and so-called stakeholder capitalism – which entails giving corporations more power over society and democratic institutions less – successfully associated global support for universal vaccine uptake against COVID-19 with a ‘left-wing’ political outlook, infused with youthful idealism.

    In particular, global Black Lives Matter demonstrations appear to have been harnessed – without the consent of organisers – to popularise the use of face masks, which became the enduring global symbol of the pandemic. The fretful atmosphere these inculcated offered a chilling reminder that COVID-19 was constantly in our midst.

    This arrived despite an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in April, 2020 dismissing calls for widespread masking as ‘a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic’. That same month the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine referred to 14 trials on the use of masks vs. no masks, saying these ‘showed no effect in either healthcare workers or in community settings’. Thereafter, even experts who questioned their efficacy were censored on social media.

    Masks were supposed to play an equivalent role to the assumed purpose of vaccines: protecting others. They were made – and in some cases remain – compulsory in many settings in numerous states, foreshadowing similar laws enforcing vaccine compliance. In essence, the vaccine would set us free from an obligation to wear masks.

    Summer, 2020

    By the summer of 2020, with case numbers plummeting, many were wondering whether COVID-19 had become an endemic, seasonal respiratory infection. We learnt that France’s first known case was in December, 2019. Later, it was discovered to have been circulating in Italy from September, 2019 and in Spain from as far back as March, 2019, apparently without overwhelming medical systems.

    But a whole industry had been waiting for a pandemic to occur, with the incentive of producing a vaccine for global use and, seemingly, an architecture of surveillance that had been publicly discussed from the outset. In contrast to the Swine Flu debacle, this opportunity would not be lost.

    Moreover, it was being reported that PCR testing was inflating case counts (and thus mortality statistics) through false positive results. Publicity stunts that generated a wave of global hysteria were by then appearing increasingly absurd. Meanwhile, extraordinary predictions for mortality, suggesting we were contending with a challenge equivalent to the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1919 were proving seriously wide of the mark.

    Spanish Influenza caused approximately 75 million deaths, whereas COVID-19 may have been responsible for a global death toll of 6 million, the vast majority of whom were beyond average life expectancy, at a time when the global population was about five times that of 1919.

    Indeed, the early spike in deaths from (or with) COVID-19 in some countries can be attributed to hospitals transferring sick older patients into care homes, where outbreaks followed and only basic medical care was available.

    The ‘Scientific’ Advice Changes…

    After a period of social isolation brought about by unprecedented stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, there were no significant outbreaks of COVID-19 in the wake of large and often disorderly Black Lives Matters demonstrations triggered by the brutal murder of George Floyd on May 25.

    In response, some outlets claimed protestors’ use of face masks had prevented outbreaks. However, most of those in evidence were cotton fabric, which health agencies now acknowledge to be next to useless. Furthermore, masks had been worn as a defence against tear gas, or in order to preserve anonymity prior to COVID-19, as the feature image for this article from 2014 demonstrates.

    Whatever the purpose, an impression was created of ‘caring’ mask-clad protestors demanding racial justice around the world. Subsequently, Joe Biden’s own lawyers helped Whole Food workers mount a legal challenge to allow them to wear Black Lives Matters-branded facemasks while on the job. More revolutionary aspirations – including to disband the police – were conveniently ignored by lockdown-enthusiasts who craved enforcement.

    Circumstantial evidence suggests that demonstrations were seized on by an alliance of vested interests that exert control over a swathe of media, new and old.

    The role of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation appears pivotal. The Foundation is the second-largest contributor to the WHO budget, and put over $10 billion into universities in 2020 as well as at least $250 million into journalism in the first half of 2020 alone.

    Unprompted by the publication of any scientific study, the WHO changed its advice on wearing masks on June 5, 2020 shortly after the Black Lives Matters demonstrations. Most national health agencies – long subject to regulatory capture – followed suit, although a few countries declined to alter long-standing advice.

    In the U.S., NIAID director Dr Anthony Fauci claimed he had previously told a white lie to the effect that wearing a mask offered no protection in order to prevent a run on stocks. But emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal he was giving the same advice in private — against mask use.

    Manipulation of mortality statistics can also be traced to a WHO document from April, 2020 entitled ‘International Guidelines for Certification and Classification (Coding) of COVID-19 as Cause of Death’. This set out strict new rules for the registration of COVID-19 deaths that differed fundamentally from registration for other causes.

    The guidelines define a COVID-19 mortality as ‘a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness, in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g. trauma).’

    The achievement of universal vaccine uptake – no matter how limited its usefulness – offered dizzying possibilities to the super-rich intent on engineering a new world order, which was openly being referred to as the Great Reset.

    Political Identification

    There was also a direct political purpose for stoking fears around COVID-19, which goes some way towards explaining the involvement of actors beyond the pharmaceutical sector. Application of ‘the science’ against COVID-19 would undermine right-wing Populist movements around the world, which had been to the fore in challenging globalisation – alongside chauvinistically asserting national and religious identities.

    The political quiescence of the radical left in a period of authoritarian lockdowns led by rapacious global corporations arrived following the defeats of Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K., and a concomitant decline in investigative journalism. Fresh from seriously undermining Corbyn with bogus charges of antisemitism, the once-progressive Guardian became a leading conduit for fearmongering coverage of COVID-19. It now provides fawning interviews with Bill Gates, whose Foundation subsidises the newspaper.

    Nonetheless, in the era of the internet political allegiances retain a tribal dimension that can be exploited. Thus, at the outset of the pandemic when lockdowns were first mooted many identifying as left-wing assumed that in ‘following the science’ and/or ‘listening to the experts’ they would be preventing the medical system from collapsing.

    But as the Greek socialist Panagiotis Sotiris put it: ‘What is missing here is something that used to be one of the main traits of the radical left, namely, an insistence that science and technology are not neutral.’

    In fact, from the outset there were huge divisions, and arguments, in the scientific community over the efficacy of lockdowns, masks and vaccine passports. But these debates were largely concealed from public view through online censorship of authoritative academic sources.

    2020 was also the year of the U.S. Presidential election during which the Democrats used the pandemic as a weapon against incumbent Populist President Donald Trump, who actively antagonised those identifying as left-wing.

    In order to defeat Trump, the Democrat establishment seems to have entered a Faustian Pact with Big Tech, ‘stakeholder capitalism’ and Big Pharma.

    One still hears partisan support for vaccines against COVID-19 being expressed by those identifying as left-wing. Most seem oblivious to the world’s ten richest men doubling their fortunes during the period, while the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fell; besides the enrichment of pharmaceutical companies.

    It is axiomatic that young people are drawn to idealistic ‘left-wing’ ideas – any man who is not a socialist at age twenty has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age forty has no head. This was also the cohort that would be most difficult to persuade to take a vaccine.

    Therefore, apart from allaying individual health concerns, taking a COVID-19 vaccine was sold as an exercise in civic virtue. Hold outs were decried as selfish and put other people’s lives at risk, even unAmerican, while ‘anti-vaxxers’ were portrayed by a prominent (however hypocritical) left-wing ideologue Fintan O’Toole as a motley crew of ‘egoists, paranoiacs and fascists.’

    Generally ignored in this coverage is in that in the U.S. vaccination rates lagged among people of colour, and that leaders of the Black Lives Matters movement were steadfastly opposed to vaccine passports.

    ‘We Realised We Could’

    In a revealing interview with The Times Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, whose unpeer-reviewed paper in March, 2020 proved pivotal – ‘due to the professor’s WHO ties’ – to the introduction of lockdowns in the U.K. and elsewhere, revealed amazement at the influence he wielded. After the British government followed Chinese policy in introducing a lockdown he observed: ‘It’s a communist, one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought. And then Italy did it. And we realised we could.’

    “Getting away” with imposing lockdowns – that appear to be causing ongoing excess deaths – was predicated on the assumption that a vaccine, or vaccines, against COVID-19 would be invented within eighteen months or longer.

    A subsidised vaccine against COVID-19 would be all the more lucrative if it was not simply a one-off treatment, and as long as states were offering a captive market, through coercion if necessary.

    It also represented a unique opportunity to trial new technologies. Unsurprising, the industry, and their supporters, were highly resistant to any suggestion of a safe, off-patent treatment being used instead.

    Since the nineteenth century, the pharmaceutical industry has been implicated in a host of scandals, including the recent opioid epidemic. Oliver Wendell Holmes, dean of Harvard Medical School concluded in 1860 that ‘if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the seas, it would be all the better for mankind – and the worse for the fishes.’

    Moreover, in a history charting advances in longevity, The Changing Body (2012), Floud et al argue that ‘it would be easy to exaggerate the importance of scientific medicine when one considers that much of the decline in the mortality associated with infectious diseases predated the introduction of effective medical measures to deal with it.’

    Of course medications such as antibiotics continue to save many lives, but as David Healy put it ‘we are living off scientific capital accumulated in an earlier age.’

    Peter C. Gøtzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre has argued that the industry’s conduct today closely resembles organized crime syndicates. He wrote perceptively: ‘Drugs always cause harm. If they didn’t, they would be inert and therefore unable to give any benefit.’

    A recently published work entitled The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine: Exposing the crisis of credibility in clinical research (2020) by Jon Jureidini and Leemon B. McHenry argues:

    Pharmaceutical spin doctors are the contemporary counterparts of the sophists of fifth century Greece. The essence of sophistry is to shape public opinion by skilful mastery of persuasive speaking without regard for any considerations of truth. Pharmaceutical marketing is a form of sophistry, whereby the serious attempt to discover efficacy or safety in medicine is subjugated to the goal of promotion. Medical rhetoric has usurped medical science – an embarrassment in an age allegedly devoted to evidence-based medicine (p.126).

    Qualitatively Different

    Attitudes to the COVID-19 vaccines were also scaffolded on tried and tested paediatric vaccines against common infectious diseases such as measles. Parents are encouraged to vaccinate their kids not just for their own sake, but for the sake of all children.

    The COVID-19 vaccines were, however, from the outset qualitatively different to most traditional vaccines, which generally produce a herd immunity that diminishes childhood morbidity – and even mortality – from infectious diseases, notwithstanding at times spurious claims of adverse reactions.

    All COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ produced so far are qualitatively different to most – with rare exceptions – traditional vaccines that are designed to prevent an infection from occurring.

    At the very least, one would have expected the trials to determine whether a COVID-19 vaccine would seriously diminish illness; yet as British Medical Journal associate editor Peter Doshi observed in October, 2020: ‘The world has bet the farm on vaccines as the solution to the pandemic, but the trials are not focused on answering the questions many might assume they are.’

    He continued:

    None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.

    Moreover, the companies were busy covering their tracks, meaning efficacy, and long-term safety data, would be difficult to determine. In January, 2021, Peter Doshi and Donald Light in the Scientific American objected to the undermining of ‘the scientific integrity of the double-blinded clinical trial the company—and other companies—have been conducting, before statistically valid information can be gathered on how effectively the vaccines prevent hospitalizations, intensive care admissions or deaths.’

    This came after Pfizer pleaded an ‘ethical responsibility’ to unblind its trial and offer the vaccine to those who received a placebo. Yet Doshi and Light argue that ‘there was another way to make an unapproved vaccine available to those who need it without undermining a trial. It’s called “expanded access.” Expanded access enables any clinician to apply on behalf of their patient to the FDA for a drug or vaccine not yet approved. The FDA almost always approves it quickly.’

    The information in the public domain was easily manipulated by servile media. In April, 2021 a Lancet article by Ollario et al referred to the ‘elephant (not) in the room’, wherein vaccine efficacy was being reported overwhelmingly in terms of a relative risk reduction. This gives percentages of around 95% efficacy, whereas the absolute risk reduction of developing a serious illness was in the region of just 1%.

    Importantly, relative risk reduction only considers ‘participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population.’

    Peter Doshi has since publicly argued these ‘products which everyone calls MRNA vaccines are qualitatively different from standard vaccines.’

    Whistleblower

    In November, 2021, Paul D. Thacker in the British Medical Journal brought to light a whistleblower’s account of poor practices at a contract research company carrying out Pfizer’s trials. Brook Jackson raised questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight which, once again, gained little or no traction in mainstream ‘progressive’ media.

    The real scandal is that often coercive attempts to persuade the entire adult – and in many cases child – population was not based on a cost-benefit analysis.

    Recently, a peer reviewed article in Vaccine – the premier journal for vaccine research – found the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with a 16% higher risk of serious adverse events.

    The study was limited to an analysis of trial data the companies had submitted to the FDA and did not evaluate the vaccines’ overall harm-benefit. The authors argue that

    The excess risk of serious adverse events found in our study points to the need for formal harm-benefit analyses, particularly those that are stratified according to risk of serious COVID-19 outcomes. These analyses will require public release of participant level datasets.

    A young, healthy person faces a vanishing risk of hospitalisation from COVID-19.

    However, throughout the pandemic industry-aligned ‘fact checking’ initiatives served to undermine scientific integrity. The tactic of so-called fact checkers is to highlight absurd claims from random sources that serve to undermine informed criticism of the lockdown-mask-vaccine policy.

    Apart from its political ramification, the vaccine was, and is, a cash cow. It is instructive that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which in an apparent appeal to left wing sentiment was to be sold ‘at cost’, never received U.S. authorisation, and the manufacturers have since announced that it will be sold for a profit.

    The failure to interrogate vested interests reflects a serious decline in contemporary journalism, especially from publications previously associated with progressive viewpoints, many of which now depend on philanthro-capitalist handouts. We have reached an absurd juncture where a centibillionaire such as Bill Gates is attacked for being ‘left-wing’.

    Sell to Anyone

    The COVID-19 pandemic realised former Merck CEO’s Henry Gadsden dream of making drugs for healthy people, which Merck would be able to ‘sell to anyone’, as he candidly revealed to Fortune magazine in the 1970s.

    This could not have been achieved without the active collaboration of technology corporations and stakeholder capitalism in an era of surveillance capitalism. The censorship and disinformation used to bring the world to a halt in 2020, and beyond, represents a unique attack on democracy and worked to the benefit of a global financial elite.

    As Jon Jureidini and Leemon B. McHenry anticipated ‘the ideal of an open, democratic society is threatened by an oligarchy of corporations’ (p.23).

    However, at least much of the evidence that was used to permit coercion is slowly being decoded by investigative journalists such as Paul D. Thacker and research scientists of the calibre of Peter Doshi. We can remain optimistic that the truth will eventually out, at least on the margins, despite continued social media censorship.

    Nonetheless, the willing dissemination of disinformation in once-reputable publications has been increasingly normalised. Thus, the first and enduring casualty of the war in Ukraine has been the truth.

    On September 10, 2022 the Guardian reported that ‘the much-publicised Ukrainian southern offensive was a disinformation campaign to distract Russia from the real one being prepared in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s special forces have said.’ Strikingly, the authors do not refer to the Guardian previously publicising that disinformation.

    COVID-19 generated a conveyor belt of disinformation that has cast doubt over the reliability of contemporary journalism, and revealed how medico-scientific discourse can be captured by vested interests. It is vital for the future of humanity, as we confront environmental challenges, warfare and crushing poverty that scientific rigour, coupled with values that can be traced to Aristotle, are reasserted.

    Feature Image: Black Lives Matter demonstration in Oakland, California, December 2014.

  • Vaccine Passports “Inherently Illiberal”

    On October 5th of this year, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly spoke before the Dáil during a debate to extend the legal framework for restrictions in the State – the sunset clause of the Health Amendments (Covid-19) Act 2021 – for three months. He stated that there was no intention to extend the restrictions beyond October 22nd, but that they wished to keep the legal framework in place in case of the need for further restrictions or lockdowns.

    This was clearly a lie, or ignorance on an unforgiveable scale. It cannot be both.

    In the interim, hospitalisations related to COVID-19 have steadily climbed, and the wheel of fear and dread has begun to turn again, quickly gathering pace.

    Thankfully, the government are attempting to turn the tide by extending the need for the Covid certification pass to theatre and cinemagoers, as well as banning nativity plays and playdates, thus surely halting the inevitable pressure that is being mounted on our health system.

    Inherently Illiberal

    I must state from the outset that I am vehemently against the concept of a vaccine passport or vaccine mandates. I believe them to be inherently illiberal and it pains me to see the willingness with which we have adopted them into our society.

    I acknowledge that when an issue produces such a visceral response, there is an increased likelihood that my reasoning may be faulty. Having read Daniel Kahnemann’s Thinking, Fast and Slow , I recognise that instinct and emotion can often cloud clear judgement. Hence, I have attempted to examine the principal arguments for and against vaccine passports in the context of the coronavirus pandemic to see if I can or will come to a different conclusion.

    I take COVID-19 extremely seriously and witness the impact of the pandemic on the patients that I meet every day. This relates not just to actual illness but to the myriad other issues, both medical and non-medical that the past twenty-two months have created for them.

    I support vaccination but not forced inoculation in the same way that I support appropriate medical treatment, not forced care. I worry that unnecessary interventions will create long-term sequalae that cannot be predicted, in the same way that inappropriate prescribing of medications does.

    Preventing the Spread?

    The most obvious argument in favour of vaccine certification is that it should prevent the spread of disease in an enclosed area. The certificate will work to protect both vaccinated and unvaccinated from contracting and spreading the disease and reducing the burden on the hospital system.

    Unfortunately, there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case. Vaccinated citizens have been readily demonstrated to be able to contract and transmit the virus in the exact same manner as an unvaccinated person.

    A recent Lancet study demonstrated that vaccination reduced the risk of Delta variant infection and accelerated viral clearance. This is great news, demonstrating that vaccines are effective. However, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections had peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases, and could efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts.[i]

    If vaccinated and unvaccinated persons are equally capable of transmitting a virus, why do we insist on segregation and marginalisation of a significant minority of our population?

    Pandemic of the Unvaccinated?

    The second argument commonly encountered is that it is the segment of the population who are unvaccinated by choice who are creating the ICU and hospital bed capacity issues.

    As of November 17th 52% of patients are unvaccinated, with a significant percentage of this population also immunocompromised. According to Minister Donnelly, 98% of the vaccinated ICU patients are immunocompromised. On this basis, there is a strong likelihood that a significant proportion of the unvaccinated cohort are not unvaccinated by choice but because they are too unwell to receive the vaccine.

    This is speculative on my part but is worth considering, and requires refutation.

    Another argument advanced is that full participation in society is not free and requires solidarity on the part of the individual citizen: Thus, “Play your part. Protect yourself. Protect others” is a common slogan.

    David Robert Grimes wrote an essay recently for The Guardian, comparing smallpox vaccine mandates in the early 1900’s to today’s issues. Of course, he neglected to mention that there was no vaccine passports in use at the time for participating in normal life, and provides no justification for them other than that they represent a mark of ‘solidarity.’

    He also states that participation in society is not free, and that freedom comes at a cost, which is somewhat paradoxical. There is an expectation of brotherhood in society. However, if brotherhood is coerced against someone’s will, it is difficult to define it so.

    I have not seen any evidence that prominent politicians during the smallpox era demanded that unvaccinated people should be banned from supermarkets and public transport. Does this evoke the spirit of fraternité?

    Finally, although never explicitly stated in Ireland, vaccine certification is certainly an effective measure to improve uptake of a vaccine.

    Whether one defines this as a nudge, gentle encouragement or coercion is a different argument. When I asked the Irish College of General Practitioners their position on the implementation of this system, they replied that ‘these people (the unvaccinated) may particularly benefit from national interventions to promote vaccination and limit the spread of COVID-19’.

    This statement is certainly open to interpretation. Undoubtedly, it has been effective in ensuring increased take-up of the vaccine in young adults – young people who may not have bothered otherwise with brother- and sisterhood.

    In a Machiavellian sense, this is the only true and potentially justifiable reason for a vaccine passport to be introduced in a civilised society. I cannot see another. Unfortunately, even 100% vaccination uptake, as in Gibraltar, has not resulted in the resolution of pandemic issues, with rising case numbers among the vaccinated causing all large Christmas activities to be cancelled.

    At this point in the pandemic, the above justification in Ireland no longer holds water. Ireland has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 93% of the eligible adult population fully vaccinated.

    One should therefore assume that the remaining 7% of the ‘non-cooperating’ population are much more likely to consider a certification system coercive and will exacerbate their own fears of over-intervention by the State and unwelcome intrusion into their private lives.

    Someone who argues that this is for the benefit of the unvaccinated in protecting them from society does not do so in good faith. If someone does not wish to be inoculated at this point, there is more than a strong possibility that they do not wish to take up the kind offer of a jab.

    A certification system hence is more likely to have the inverse effect of its presumed benign intention. It is more likely to convince them further that the State wishes to harm and to segregate them against their wishes from a society that has already, by and large, shunned them.

    State of Distrust

    There has been no attempt to understand any of the multiple reasons why people do not wish to receive this vaccine. Distrust of the State, distrust of the pharmaceutical industry, distrust of the healthcare industry, anecdotal reports of adverse effects and concerns regarding under-reporting, the list is varied. The consistent link between all these issues/concerns is that of distrust.

    Many papers have been written on the subject of discussing vaccine hesitancy as a doctor with a patient. All suggest addressing hesitancy with compassion and understanding as decision-making around vaccination entails a complex mix of cultural, psychosocial, spiritual, political, and cognitive factors.[ii]

    Reasons for vaccine hesitancy fit into three categories: lack of confidence (in effectiveness, safety, the system, or policy makers), complacency (perceived low risk of acquiring VPDs), and lack of convenience (in the availability, accessibility, and appeal of immunization services, including time, place, language, and cultural contexts).

    All suggest addressing the patient’s concerns carefully, discussing with openness and honesty any potential side-effects as well as advocating the benefits, such as they are.

    Has any of this been done at any point during the pandemic with the vaccine hesitant? Vaccine passports are not a tool to advocate for immunisation in a humane and empathic manner and it is equally certain that the most effective way of fomenting further distrust is to patronise people for their ‘stupidity’ in doubting the effectiveness of a medical intervention, while downplaying the potential for any side-effects and then to mandate the intervention as a necessity for full participation in normal society, such as it is.

    Scapegoating

    Instead of focusing on and congratulating the 94% of the eligible adult population who have been vaccinated, we have decided to scapegoat and segregate the dirty few who have not complied with government directives.

    As a reminder, segregation has never been an attractive or effective feature of a functioning society. I make no lazy comparison to Nazi Germany, but rather suggest that people consider the State’s recent attitudes to same-sex relationships.

    It should not be forgotten that homosexuality was only decriminalised in Ireland in 1993. That was a horrible and unjust law, horridly intruding into the lives of normal people. Same-sex marriage was legalised six short years ago in 2015.

    Can any sane person reasonably make the case that it was legitimate or more importantly, healthy for a society to deny that two private citizens who love each other should be allowed to spend their lives together in a loving, equal relationship? That it was reasonable that same-sex marriage was such a danger to society that it had to remain illegal in the twenty-first century?

    By this logic, are the unvaccinated so lethally unclean that it is worth intentionally re-dividing society? That it is worth every citizen who wishes to eat in a restaurant having to demonstrate by law a private medical decision to a waiter that has no interest and no business in knowing same?

    The State is not a benign entity and is capable of dreadful, discriminatory decisions that have long-lasting impacts of the fabric of the country that we live in. Our long history of governmental corruption, cronyism and cover-ups at the cost to its people did not magically disappeared at the onset of a pandemic to be replaced by a wonderful, altruistic body guided by love and the rights of the individual.

    Marginalisation

    We should also consider the demographics of some of the people who do not wish to be vaccinated. People with lower levels of household income and those living in disadvantaged areas are demonstrably associated with increased likelihood of vaccine resistance and hesitancy.

    A recent survey also demonstrated that BAME people are a minimum of 25% less likely to take up the offer of the Covid vaccine.

    It is regularly reported that lockdowns and prolonged periods of state-imposed restrictions have had the most demonstrably negative effects on the exact population groups who are also hesitant to receive the vaccine.

    Therefore, we have managed to punish and further marginalise the very people who have suffered the most throughout this pandemic and will likely suffer the most in the years of anticipated turmoil ahead.

    This is not to denigrate the many wonderful, intelligent people who quite rightly question the manner in which they feel their country is being governed and directed but to highlight the unnecessary dual suffering that many people will encounter in the months and years ahead.

    In any other time, scepticism and resistance to dictates targeting minorities would be celebrated, not scorned. We should hold our leaders to a high standard at all times, not allow them easy opportunities for deflection from their own failings and label almost everything that does not agree with State narrative as “misinformation.”

    Again, instead of trying to understand why people do not wish to be injected with a treatment that they consider dangerous and unproven, and to try to convince in a humane and empathic manner, we have instead chosen to demonise and make them the culprits for the current issues that the hospital system faces in Ireland.

    Do we wish to follow the example of Singapore and begin charging patients who become ill and are unvaccinated by choice? Do we wish to follow the lead of Australia and send our citizens to quarantine camps against their wishes? Do we wish to follow the lead of Austria and lockdown the unvaccinated, and now mandate vaccines for the whole population?

    Why are these questions not being asked and answer by the opposition political parties in Ireland? Liberalism is defined as a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise and is supposed to be the cornerstone of left-wing politics.

    The presumed left, including Sinn Fein, Labour, the Social Democrats, People before Profit, have been pathetic in their lack of any attempt to hold the State to account. A strong opposition is the cornerstone of democracy, and it is not present currently in Ireland.

    Image (c) Daniele Idini.

    Public Health Department

    I have discussed vaccine certification with the local public health department in relation to the management of this pandemic. The doctor that I spoke to readily admitted that there is no medical indication for the use of vaccine certification and was shocked at the extension of the recent legislation in October.

    Hence, my surprise at the recent declarations by Colm Henry and Ina Kelly, president of the IMO, that the public should walk out of pubs or restaurants that are not asking for Covid 19 digital certificates.

    There remains no evidence whatsoever that vaccine certification has made any improvement to the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in any country that it has been used.

    An Israeli paper examining the effects of their ‘Green Pass’ concluded that apart from the coercive effects of increasing vaccine uptake[iii], there is no evidence that the use of a passport system reduces morbidity loads on a population.

    To repeat, there is no public health evidence for the intentional segregation of society. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

    Anyone who argues that there is should be immediately dismissed as a fool. However, if you wish to look at the data, the HSPC have kindly provided information on COVID-19 outbreaks in the Republic of Ireland.

    In May of 2021, there had been a grand total of two outbreaks attributed to hairdressers/personal grooming services. By November, there are now twenty-two recorded. In May, there were ten outbreaks attributed to public houses. By November, there have been forty more.

    Does anyone truly believe that presenting a piece of paper at the door achieves anything when the holder continues to have the potential to be highly infectious? There is no evidence that it improves either your safety or the safety of others.

    Image (c) Daniele Idini

    Misdirected Indication

    There has also been a recent effort to blame the unvaccinated for various sad occurrences that have occurred because of the lack of capacity in the HSE. Thus, it was reported that a transplant operation was cancelled because unvaccinated patients occupied ICU beds and the procedure was unable to go ahead.

    Blaming the unvaccinated for this is completely disingenuous and abdicates responsibility for decades of poor management. The reader should know that Ireland does not have a good reputation in the transplant world. We are currently 18th out of 24 countries in Europe, below Lithuania and Estonia in terms of organ transplantation per million people.

    In 2015, Dr David Hickey, the transplant surgeon described in the Irish Independent that he was the only pancreatic transplant surgeon in the State. Despite multiple offers to the HSE to mentor two people to take over his role, nothing was done. The pancreatic transplant program was then moved to another hospital setting, against advice and without consultation. At the time, no transplants, despite their life-saving nature, took place over a nine-month period.

    To consider that the people ‘clogging up the ICU’s’ are responsible for historically well-recognised governmental and state body failures is malicious.

    The 2019 Euro Health Consumer Index places Ireland in last position, below Albania, North Macedonia, Latvia and Romania, countries all with their own issues, in terms of outpatient hospital waiting lists.

    Ireland has the lowest rate of hospital consultants in the EU18, a fact heavily bemoaned by the Irish Medical Organisation. Shortages of GPs, shortages of nursing and allied health professionals, overcrowded emergency departments and public health failures have been reliable sources of outrage and headlines over the course of the past twenty years.

    Fortunately, there is now a perfect fall guy in the shape of an unvaccinated person to take the ire of the populace.

    The unvaccinated are at fault for five-year orthopaedic waiting lists, the unvaccinated are responsible for spiralling chronic diseases in an increasingly obese and unhealthy society. The unvaccinated are responsible for the lack of clinical staff living and working in this country.

    It would be laughable were it not for the real human cost of such misdirected indignation and hatred.

    If we are to blame the individual for the failings of the system, we should apply this logic to the others who place a heavier burden on the health system. The obese, the alcoholics, the smokers, the poor should all feel our wrath at the impact they place upon our hospitals. Perhaps an obesity cert would be an incentive for them to lose weight or keep them out of restaurants? That can only have positive results.

    Chaotic Interference

    Continuing along this path of chaotic interference in people’s lives will have iatrogenic consequences. Professor Helen Townsend, director of the Self-Harm Research Group in the University of Nottingham, has described the likely severe long-term consequences of lockdowns and that these have never been accounted for in policy making19.

    Has any consideration been given to the societal impacts of intentionally separating the ‘dirty dissenters’ from the rest of the country? If there is no public health evidence for overwhelming benefit, how can we justify such an enormous departure from normality?

    The ethical implications of these decisions have clearly not been fully considered, if at all. It should be noted that the National Public Health Emergency Team does not have any bioethical or legal representation, an amazing fact considering the enormous decisions that have been made on the basis of their recommendations over the course of the past twenty months.

    The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has repeatedly requested that such a representative should join NPHET, but this has been ignored. The ICCL, for what it is worth, has also stated their strong opposition to a domestic vaccine passport, stating that the system is discriminatory and has been developed without any meaningful consideration of human rights.

    And yet still we persist and tolerate further encroachment into both our and our children’s lives. 50,000 people can go to a football match in the Aviva stadium, the CEO of the HSE can drink and rub shoulders with sporting royalty indoors without a mask, yet we think it is appropriate that nine-year-old children should be masked and instructed not to attend nativity plays.

    190,000 children are currently living in poverty in Ireland, yet this is not a crisis worth addressing in the mainstream media. Instead, it is recommended to avoid playdates and sleepovers while Gary Barlow croons to thousands in the 3 Arena. It is preposterous and the antithesis of public health. It causes me great shame as a doctor that these measures are being carried out in the name of my profession.

    I am unable to convince myself that a system of vaccine certification is a reasonable or ethical idea in an essentially fully vaccinated adult population for a virus that is transmissible regardless of your vaccination status.

    Image (c) Daniele Idini.

    A Thought Experiment

    If you remain convinced that it is, I would like to propose a final thought experiment. Consider a politician or government that you dislike or fear. Consider your reaction if they were to have introduced a vaccine passport over the course of the past six months.

    Would you agree with segregation of society if Donal Trump suggested it? Would you clap wholeheartedly if Vladimir Putin encouraged marginalisation of a minority of people who have not broken any laws? Would you dismiss civil rights concerns if Bolsanaro was championing minority-blaming and hatred?

    If you would agree to all these questions, I would congratulate you on your single-minded conviction and realise that I will never convince you – as is assumed to be the case with all ‘anti-vaxxers’, a derogatory term that I despise.

    Coercion and essentially forced vaccination signifies a complete failure of scientific and public health messaging. My sympathies lie with the people who are not currently welcome to participate in society on the basis of one personal decision which has not broken any law.

    They have been stripped of their constitutional rights without seemingly without any recourse to due process. That should give anyone reason to pause and reflect. Without acknowledging it, we have become a country that has slipped, almost overnight, into an enduring state of fear and intolerance. I worry for the future and the country that my children will inhabit.

    [i] Anika Singanayagam, PhD et al, ‘Community transmission and viral load kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the UK: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study’, The Lancet, October 29, 2021,  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext

    [ii] Shixin (Cindy) Shen and Vinita Dubey, ‘Addressing vaccine hesitancy: Clinical guidance for primary care physicians working with parents’, The College of Family Physicians of Canada, 2019 Mar; 65(3): 175–181. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6515949/

    [iii] Ruth Waitzburg, ‘The Israeli Experience with the “Green Pass” Policy Highlights Issues to Be Considered by Policymakers in Other Countries,’ November 2021, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(21):11212. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355819969_The_Israeli_Experience_with_the_Green_Pass_Policy_Highlights_Issues_to_Be_Considered_by_Policymakers_in_Other_Countries