In Vaccines We Trust
You know that a topic has become truly toxic when it is almost impossible to hold any kind of contrary view on it. So it was and is with masks which I have already written about. Back in September last year, Jennifer Zamparelli, a well-known Irish DJ, proposed having a discussion on masks on her radio show and requested input from people who had “strong opinions on wearing them or not wearing them.”1 Well, if she hadn’t realised what an utterly toxic subject masks were, she realised soon enough when she was “met with a wave of responses condemning her for giving anti-mask people a platform.”2
“And you want to give these loons a platform?” asked one Twitter user.3
“You are promoting fascism” added another. 4
An actual Irish Senator summoned all her eloquence to comment simply, “Sweet Jesus.”5
Sweet Jesus, indeed. In a move that surprised absolutely nobody that is familiar with the mechanics of modern social censure, Zamparelli quickly cancelled the discussion. An Irish journalist, celebrating this decision, commented: “Think @rte did the right thing by cancelling @JenniferMaguire debate. There's no debate on masks. There aren't two 'sides'.6
She’s right, of course. There is no debate on masks precisely because none is allowed. I won’t go over old ground on the issue. If you read my last piece you’ll know what I think of them. Prof. Carl Heneghan, Director of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, sums it up well when he says on masking in the community:
Any evidence that you bring to the table would be mechanistic, would be weak, observational evidence which has been shown over decades to have flaws. So, by all means, people can wear masks or not wear masks; policy can make the decision but what they can’t do is say that it’s an evidence-based decision.7
One of the world’s leading authorities on evidence-based medicine questions the evidence for masks being used by the general public but apparently the issue is beyond question. Say it enough times and it’s true, I suppose. Just shut up and wear the damn mask.
Anyway, I bring up the issue of masks and the toxicity surrounding them merely to introduce another, equally toxic topic and one potentially far more serious – vaccines.
Like masks, there is only one permittable position on vaccines – they work. Not only do they work but they are our salvation. Anything that diverges from this position and you are an “anti-vaxxer”. Now, I will add here, as nearly everyone feels the need to, that both my children have completed their course of childhood vaccinations. I am no more an anti-vaxxer than someone who chooses not to eat one particular type of food is an anti-fooder. I question the Covid vaccines because, as with masks, there are legitimate questions to be asked no matter how many times Twitter hashtags tell us that they’re completely safe and effective.
The current crop of Covid vaccines were developed, tested, and licensed in less than a year - a process that normally takes closer to a decade. In the case of both Pfizer and Moderna, the companies have produced not just new vaccines but an entirely new type of vaccine (mRNA), never before licensed for use in humans. Where these new type of vaccines were previously tested in animals, the results were so disappointing and the side-effects so severe that many pharmaceutical companies abandoned the entire premise.8 But then Covid came along and Operation Warp Speed sprang into action and not just one but two mRNA vaccines came along in less than a year that overcame the previous difficulties.
I say overcame them but these two mRNA vaccines, that have already been injected into millons of arms, come with their own range of side-effects. VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Reaction Reporting System) in America currently lists over 1,700 deaths associated with the the mRNA vaccines and nearly 4,000 hospitalisations.9 It is not inconsequential here that, contrary to popular belief, these vaccines are not actually approved by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for use in America. Rather, they have received only an EUA (Emergency Use Authorisation) - a way to allow the FDA to facilitate availability of an unapproved product. Under an EUA, the standard is not to evaluate the “effectiveness” of the product but rather it sets a far lower threshold of evidence, namely that the product “may be effective”.10 Full approval of these vaccines is still pending in America.
Meanwhile, in Europe, a third vaccine, Oxford-AstraZeneca, is in widespread use. This vaccine is actually a traditional vaccine so does not use mRNA technology. (EDIT: 9th April 2021 - I have since learnt that I am being too generous to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and there is nothing “traditional” about it. See note at bottom of article. Everything else stands though and so does the article). Nevertheless, it has had a torrid time so far and was recently suspended in a dozen countries following concerns that it was causing lethal blood clots. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has assessed the issue and despite headlines exclaiming that the vaccine has been declared safe, that word appears nowhere in the official statement from the EMA. It merely says that “the benefits of the vaccine…continue to outweigh the risk of side effects.”11 Consider yourself reassured.
And all of this is just the short term safety profile. What of the medium and long term risks? Well, who knows really? In the case of the mRNA vaccines we are talking about new technology, something which has never been injected into people en masse like this before. We’ll have to wait and see, I suppose - that’s honestly the best we can say. Anyone who says different is just trying to get you to take the vaccine. They might have very good, well-intentioned, reasons for wanting you to do so but we might as well be honest about it. We have zero medium or long term safety data because they’ve only existed for a year. Extrapolating from the safety profile of previous, established vaccines doesn’t work when you’re dealing with a whole new genre of medicine.
Still, although there might be a risk of side-affects, we can at least expect vaccination to have a significant impact on the spread of the actual disease. Tell that to Chile who have given more than a third of their population at least one dose of the vaccine but are nevertheless now experiencing something of a crisis.12 Interestingly, initial spikes in cases can be noted in several countries that have achieved high levels of vaccination, including Israel, Hungary, Serbia, and Chile. A paper out of Denmark sheds some potential light on this indicating that, following administration of the first dose of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine to Long Term Care Residents, absolutely zero protective effect was observed. In fact, cases actually rose in this group. Protective effect only seemed to kick in after the second dose and most clearly seven days after it but even then at nothing like the 90+% rates suggested by the initial trial data.13 Perhaps, none of this should be surprising given the relatively small number of older people with comorbidities who were actually included in the vaccine trials. Only 4.2% of Pfizer’s participants were aged over 75 and less than half of them had comorbidities.14 Not including large numbers of the very people susceptible to the sickness you are trying to prevent is certainly one way to achieve high effectiveness stats.
I’ll leave the technical stuff there. Suffice it to say I think it appropriate and entirely justified to refer to these vaccines as definitively experimental. If that wasn’t already clear then I would add that the mRNA vaccines are both still in their Phase III clinical trial period until 2022 while the AstraZeneca trial completes in 2023, which means if you take them you are technically a trial subject.
Ultimately, I’m not actually trying to put people off these vaccines or suggest that they’re ineffective or dangerous - that’s not my place. I am, however, attempting to restore a little balance to a topic that has long since gone from the objective to the religious. In a world that no longer has a God to appeal to in times of great strife, it appears that itch still needs to be scratched and a new religion has sprung up in worship of Science which elicits as much blind faith in its adherents as the old religion once did. As more and more evidence comes to the fore to show the sheer futility of masks and lockdowns, these sacred precepts of the new religion are protected and clung to even more fiercely. Vaccines may yet prove to be the most fundamental block of the new creed.
So strong is faith in the new religion that adherents will happily take these experimental vaccines while pregnant despite the manufacturers specifically stating they have no safety data for this cohort (because pregnant women were excluded from the trials). The new faith is even already ascribing its own miracles, surely the only way to comprehend the emergence of ‘Long Covid’ sufferers who are attributing the resolution of their symptoms to having received the sacred vaccine - something which is biologically nonsensical. We are surely not far from seeing actual effigies of worship to the cult of Covid vaccines. To be honest, we are practically there already as this tower in Germany suggests, lit up with a slogan reading “Vaccinate = Freedom”.
What’s certainly clear is that the powers-that-be really want you to take this vaccine. If you haven’t already been terrified half to death by Covid that you are lining up with sleeve pre-rolled, then you’ve possibly been convinced to get one for the common good (the “I don’t wear my mask to protect myself, I do it to protect you/I don’t take my vaccine to protect me, I do it to protect you” mantra). And if none of that convinced you then perhaps the slogan on the German Tower will, as it did British journalist Peter Hitchens, who bartered for the freedom to see his family abroad by reluctantly taking the jab.15 Threats to people’s liberty doesn’t strike me as a thoroughly ethical way to make people take a vaccine but then we do live in unethical times, it seems. What’s worse though is that the threats are, very likely, empty ones. Hitchens, an excellent journalist who was among the first to criticise the Covid response, has had no more freedom returned to him than any of the Great Unjabbed. Maybe that may change in the future but it seems a shame to preemptively give into such threats. Personally, I prefer my Sword of Damocles to be a little more precarious, if not in full flight downwards. Even then, if it falls, I suspect we may find it made not of sharp steel but mushy cardboard.
In the end, the issue boils down to whether you actually want a vaccine or whether you are inclined to take one because that is what your new Church demands. If it is the former then, of course, work away - your health is your own, not mine or anyone else’s. But if it is the latter then I can only hope you receive the rewards you have been promised and that future sacraments are not too taxing.
For me, my faith lies elsewhere.
EDIT: 9th April 2021 - I said above that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was a traditional vaccine. That is not true. The technology at use in it and also in the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine is as novel as the mRNA vaccines. Traditional vaccines operate by introducing a dead or attenuated version of a virus into the human body whereby it stimulates an immune response that the body can remember later if it meets the real virus naturally. All of the currently authorised (but unapproved) Covid vaccines in America and Europe instead introduce RNA (Pfizer and Moderna) or DNA (Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson) into the body which instructs host cells to make a piece of the coronavirus (the spike protein). This piece of the virus then triggers the immune response which the body will hopefully remember should it meet the real virus. Oxford-AstraZeneca is thus as experimental as the mRNA vaccines. For more information, Dr. Marcus de Brun has an excellent article that covers this and more. Otherwise, everything I say in this article stands and is actually strengthened by this clarification.
ibid.
Really interesting essays. can I ask, is there any evidence for or against the idea that mass vaccinations (all ages groups) will help prevent the emergence of a new (more deadly) variant? I'm wondering if there is an argument along those lines that supports the idea that <65's should get the jab. thanks.