A Man of His Word

March 4, 2021 Longrider Civil Liberties, General News, Health and Fitness, misanthropy, Political, sophistry 25

It would seem that Ian Brown has principles and is sticking to them. Well done, that man.

Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown has dropped out of a forthcoming music festival after it was revealed that attendees will be required to be vaccinated from Covid.

Quite right, too. No one should be placed under pressure of any kind to have a vaccine. As for the cretins who seemed to think that they had savaged him over the matter, they are looking pretty stupid now. Well, they were already looking stupid already, but you get my drift.

Remember this from a few days ago?

“That’s up to Butlins, surely?” one commenter replied, with the tweet being liked nearly 10,000 times.

As I said at the time, no, it isn’t, it’s up to Brown and he has taken a principled stance on the matter. We need more people like Brown and fewer like Piers Morgan or the person who posted the vacuous tweet.

During the pandemic, Brown has become a vocal anti-vaxxer, and has criticised the practise of wearing protective facial masks to prevent the spread of Covid.

Anti-vaxxer is much like climate denier – its a catch all insult that lacks any nuance nor recognises any in the target. Simply expressing concerns about this vaccine and the lack of long term data gets you labelled an anti-vaxxer, because cheap insults are now substituted for logical, informed evidence-based argument. As for protective masks, there is no evidence whatsoever that they protect the wearer or others from an airborne pathogen, yet still the hard of thinking peddle this absurd myth.

The singer has faced condemnation from some fans for his statements, with critics arguing his stance contradicts expert medical advice.

Expert medial advice these days is more akin to shamanism than it is to medicine. Remember, expert medical advice once told us that thalidomide was safe. Experts can and do get it wrong. They are not infallible, yet they are now regarded as high priests in the new religion.

On the subject of stupidity, this being the MSM and the people who comment are usually hard of thinking:

One wonders whether he will catch it given his attitude. Time will tell.

So, attitude is what causes it to spread. Well, that’s a new one. The level of stupidity is bordering on the painful.

On this note, I had a letter drop through the letterbox the other day telling me that I could now contact the NHS to make an appointment to get a jab.

I don’t think so.

25 Comments

  2. I wonder if they will announce who they are to my BT Call Blocker?

    “The person you speak to will see if you need any help and support”

    I don’t suppose telling them to bugger off will fit that description…

  3. Ian Brown might be principled but is he right? What if he’s wrong? He’s quite within his rights to refuse to play the gig. However he has played in Sweden where the US govt recommends Hep A and Hep B vaccinations. Did he get vaccinated for Hep?

    I’ve done an awful lot of digging recently into a lot of the stories around covid and have tried to get some form of concrete evidence for the sort of claims made by those from the anti vaccination crowd. I’ve dug into peer reviewed papers and gone to watch and read stuff by proper microbiologists, doctors and vaccine experts. What I’m finding is that there really is an awful lot of misinformation about such as the mRNA will change people’s genes. This is highly unlikely as not only is the mRNA in the vaccine only a fragment of mRNA it is only going into the cytoplasm of a person’s cell but it is not going anywhere near the nucleus where the DNA resides. Despite my very steep learning curve I’m discovering that a large amount of the scare stories about people dropping dead after vaccines or suffering permanent Bells Palsy are untrue. Yes some people, such as my wife and my neighbour have had adverse reactions but they are both minor and temporary.

    What I’m also discovering, as would anybody else who frequents Gab or Parler is that there is a massive massive crossover between those who are saying that the covid vaccine changes people’s genes or damages fertility or contains poisonous elements to it and the genuine anti vaccination fraggles. These anti vaccination fraggles have been pushing their bunkum for years and it has got worse since Andrew Wakefield made the false claim that vaccines cause autism. It is the anti vax types who have been in large part responsible for America and the UK losing Measles free status because vaccination rates have dropped due to the scaremongering of the anti vaxxers. The anti vaxxers have seized upon the covid crisis and have used it to beef up their objections to vaccines in general.

    I’ve seen anti vaccine advocates pull all sorts of tricks recently. In one case an anti vaccination aligned ‘health’ journal put out a story claiming that in animal tests a coronavirus vaccine killed all the ferrets involved in the study. I was suspicious of the validity of this claim so I went to view the original paper on PubMed. What I found was that not only was this a paper from 2012, but it was also relating to SARS COV1 and was using a completely different vaccine formulation one based on whole attenuated virus. I’m sorry to have to say this but if someone like Ian Brown is getting his information from anti vaccination advocates or activists then he by definition is an anti vaxxer.

    Digging through the real science and searching out real scientists who have a lot to lose by spouting nonsense has been both difficult and also embarrassing as it has caused me to have to revise my views. For example I dislike immensely the dehumanising masks and like many others I took on trust, sadly from people I trusted, the interpretation that the masks don’t work. However when I dug down via the Science Based Medicine resource I found a few flaws with the Danish mask study. Not only was this study done in the very early stages of the pandemic but it was not monitored properly, did not have a large enough number of participants and was plagued by ethical errors such as the moral problem of exposing people to a then unknown not properly understood disease in order to test mask / no mask results.

    There is a very large difference between anti vaxxer and ‘climate denier’. With the latter there is definitely two sides to the argument with valid views on both sides. With the former there is no two sides to this issue as it’s been very well established that vaccines save lives. There is no valid argument for the anti vax side unless that is the argument is that 50% infant mortality is a good thing. I’m a mid life parent. I grew up with my grandparents and others of that generation speaking in hushed and frightened tones about how Polio, Diptheria, Whooping Cough had turned up in their area or had carried off this or that child. I don’t have to worry about these illnesses because of vaccination. My child didn’t even have to have a smallpox jab because smallpox is now extinct in the wild.

    Doctors I agree are not gods, drug manufacturers get things badly wrong sometimes as with Thalidomide,but times have changed since Thalidomide. Research is better, there is better monitoring of drug trials and reporting of adverse reactions and unwanted side effects is streets ahead of what it used to be. Could a Thalidomide happen again? It’s possible but it’s a lot less possible than it used to be.

    I hate the idea of vaccine passports. I can see some logic for it with international travel as it is not that much different from a Yellow Fever vaccination requirement for some countries. I’m really wary of them for domestic use as it’s quite possible that they could be abused and bring up equity and discrimination issues. However, we live in a much more litigious world than was previously the case and venues are going to want to arse cover as best they can in order not to get sued into penury by the family of an immuno-compromised individual who contracts covid at a gig.

    We need to get out of this mess that the Chinese have got us into. That way out looks most likely to be vaccination and voluntary informed choice vaccination at that, or it would be if the anti vaxxers had not scared the living hell out of people with very little science knowledge by using big medical words inappropriately and wrongly. The problem is that without mandatory vaccination, something that many including myself believe would go against the Nuremberg Code, or some way of knowing who’s vaccinated and who is not, how do we know whether someone is vaccinated against a disease that may well kill only 0.5% of those who suffer from it in rich countries but which kills 27% in places like Yemen? The scaremongering by anti vaxxers is pushing nations down the road of mandatory vaccines and that opens up a whole new kettle of rotting fish morally and ethically.

    Maybe if Boris Johnson had closed the nation’s borders early enough, maybe if we didn’t have large communities of people who believe that if they die it is their deity’s will or that vaccines are a ‘Jewish plot’ to sterilise their community. Maybe if Britain had had a proper pandemic plan that didn’t only focus on influenza and considered other respiratory diseases then we might be in a different position. It’s quite possible that if Britons had been much better educated scientifically then they may not have been taken in by charlatans and quacks like Yeadon, Cahill, Sheri Tenpenny and others and might have voluntarily taken steps to slow down the spread of covid? What I do know is that this government has failed us in all sorts of ways and most definitely in how they’ve communicated what should have been a simple harm reduction message and this is why I’m not voting Tory next time.

    • I think you’ve missed the nuance of the argument. Yes there are anti-vax nutters out there who say all vaccines are bad. That is very different to people taking a logical, cautious approach to a particular set of vaccines approved under emergency licence which have not had time to undergo the full range of tests for medium to long term side effects. Leggy is a good source on this.

      It’s all about balancing risk and reward right now. If I were 70+ I would probably go for it. But I hope to have many years ahead of me and despite having one of the main underlying conditions (I’m not convinced it actually makes any difference; correlation is not causation) I am choosing to wait and see before getting this particular jab.

      • Leggy is a good source on this.

        My position is the same as Leggy’s. I have had all the usual vaccines in my time and have no objection to the principle. I can even accept that travelling to certain countries means having certain vaccines for particularly nasty and fatal diseases. However, for this particular disease this is neither necessary nor desirable any more than the flu jab is and the rush to get this vaccine out in the wild without any long term data is a good reason to be cautious.

      • Agree a cautious approach is a good idea in many things. But my digging into the science has calmed my views on this vaccine. Reading through reams and reams of scientific papers has convinced me that this vaccine is relatively safe. It is a case of balancing risk and reward I admit that. I was once in the ‘natural herd immunity’ camp, but studying the potential dangers of covid and having an awareness of the vital need to open up our economy again, have brought me to the conclusion that the small risks posed by a vaccine (which seem to be less risky than the old live attenuated virus jab for Smallpox) are better than the disease.

        Sadly it is mostly the lunatic anti vaccination crowd who are pushing the ‘covid vaccinations are dangerous’ but their view has leaked out into the general world and is now being pushed by those not associated with that anti vax cult.

    • Ian Brown might be principled but is he right?

      Put simply, yes. Your other points notwithstanding, the concept of a vaccine passport is abhorrent and should be resisted.

      I am aware of the flaws in the Danish mask study, but as none of the other studies carried out on masks have found any evidence of their effectiveness on the management of a pathogen, I remain unconvinced. Not least, given that we have real world examples – Japan, for example where mask use is common place still has similar flu deaths to our own, and despite masks being mandated, Covid did precisely what any reasonable person would have expected it to do this winter. Flawed studies or not, there is no evidence that masks are effective.

    • Yeadon a quack? There are certainly quacks and loonies on both sides of this debate but I don’t think Yeadon could reasonably be described as one. And remember, ‘our’ loonies live in the margins in comment threads writing unhinged illiterate screeds and howling into the wind to no effect. ‘Their’ loonies are running the country.

    • “the anti vaxxers had not scared the living hell out of people with very little science knowledge by using big medical words inappropriately and wrongly.”

      “the government had not scared the living hell out of people with very little science knowledge by using big medical words inappropriately and wrongly.”

      There, fixed it for you. Politicians didn’t start to tell the truth and be competent last March.

      Re-anti vaxxers and I Brown, it seems to me that you use the basic trick of assigning an opinion to people and then criticizing that opinion, a sign of poor thinking.

      As for masks, even if they were capable of stopping a 100nm virus with 300nm holes (and then only 95% of the time), unless you change them every few minutes wearing nitrile gloves and incinerate them immediately, they’re about as useful for the purpose as a spoon. You mention the Danish study to criticize it but fail to cite the numerous studies that show that masks work (though they’re very useful for virtue signalling).

      We’ve lost a year, sacrificed the young for the old, destroyed businesses and livelihoods, created more than a million unemployed, imprisoned people in their own homes, created myriad stupid rules and little kapos, given a shower of incompetent criminals led by johnson unlimited powers and yet, it’s the fault of a few people that the virus spread?

      I call BS on you doing any research at all, let alone understanding it, when your agenda is quite clear.

      • There, fixed it for you. Politicians didn’t start to tell the truth and be competent last March.

        This is perhaps the most puzzling part of the whole affair. People who had up until March last year been labelling the government in general and Boris in particular as self-serving opportunistic liars, started to believe everything that came out of their mouths, no matter how absurd, authoritarian and unscientific – and let’s be clear here, the response to this is highly unscientific. It is a classic example of panic and hysteria by a government that is out of its depth and driven by the hyperbole spewed out by the press with its disingenuous reporting of figures. Add into this PHE gerrymandering the cause of death figures and an accurate picture is difficult to discern.

        What is clear is that in 2019/20 we had the equivalent of a bad flu year. In 2020/21, it is above average but again, a bad flu year. None of this justifies mass vaccination with an experimental vaccine, nor the wearing of useless face masks, closing down of the economy, placing us under house arrest nor the use of police powers to arrest people for trying to live normal lives.

        • I recently came back from 6 weeks spent in French Polynesia (tough but someone’s got to do it), via Paris. I’ve been tested negative 4 times (kind of expected since I got tested positive before Christmas, was unwell for a couple of days and is now immune), the last one 2 days before coming back here.

          Still, you have to spend £210 on 2 testing kits to be done at home on day 2 and 8 of your self isolation. I had the police come to my house after 4 days to check I was there, so I guess it’s a good thing because it must mean that we won’t get our house burgled anymore, cars stolen on the drive or our kids being assaulted in the tube. Crime is a thing of the past.

          The interesting thing however is that if you pay for a private test after 5 days, and it’s negative, you can stop isolation. Why can’t I use the 2nd test I paid for after 5 days then? Apart from costing me another £150, what is the difference?

          We used to call that racketeering I think.

      • @monoi
        I agree. @FH seems too trusting of TPTB on covid

        On his closing borders earlier – when? Feb, Mar 2020?

        Virus was spread worldwide in Oct 2019, but nobody noticed as normal autumn/winter deaths – and still are. Then China publicly locked down and testing & Ferguson started…

        • Trump closed the border with China at the end of January and was promptly called a racist…

      • I don’t have an ‘agenda’ as you put it. I was firmly on the side of the sceptics for a long while until I started to wonder ‘what if I’m wrong’? The problem I see is that there have been scaremongers on both sides,the govt and the anti vax types and similar. Personally and also with hindsight I would have closed the borders in January / February 2020.

        I believe that the government has massively failed when it came to public messaging. There was no pr plan for a pandemic other than influenza come to think of it all the govt’s planning per se was based around pandemic flu rather than anything else. I think the govt shot themselves in the foot badly by providing the public with bad optics situations such as letting the BLM /Marxists run riot yet having the police go in heavy on those objecting to lockdowns.

  4. Its worth looking at the booking site to see where you can go for the vaccination. From Swindon I can go to Poole/ Bournemouth, Weston Supermare Bromsgrove, Warwick, Hemel Hempsted, Uxbridge and just about anywhere between except Swindon. No bad considering we are supposed to stay at home

  5. Even if you ignore the more extreme views that Farenheit211 clearly refers to, my position is quite simple – I learned decades ago never to rush out and get the latest version of ANYTHING. Whether it be a CB radio, the first FWD Ford Escort, a software update, a drug, whatever – YOU will be the one carrying out the development for the manufacturer. And please don’t pretend that “Accelerated” testing is an adequate substitute for real world experience either.

    “The Vaccine” (which is itself a false term, since there are several different types), has been rushed to the market in a matter of months, and is neither fully approved, or properly licensed. Normally this process can take 5-10 YEARS, and is why governments have had to offer legal indemnity to the manufacturers in the event that things go badly wrong.

    Oh, and by the way, even if you think the recent Danish study is not trustworthy, I have copies of more than 50 other reports which say the same thing, the oldest dating back some 40 years…

    • The problem with the Danish study – and I really don’t know why they did this – is that they did not test for source control. It was a major omission, frankly. However, as you say, there are plenty of other studies that reached the same conclusion.

Comments are closed.