It’s started. I got a call from the NHS immunisation service. This despite my having specifically declined the covid jab. I guess it was a matter of time and I was warned by one of the folk here that this would happen. One of the delights of modern technology being that the number and who it was popped up on the screen, so I just rejected the call. Actually, I was busy anyway, but that’s by the by. They left a voicemail. I have now blocked the number. Sometimes, people just don’t get the message.
I suppose a knock on the door will be next.
They send me a text every few weeks. Someone in a call centre rang to try and persuade me to have the jab. My GP (when I eventually got to see him about something unrelated) also asked me when I was going to get vaccinated. I don’t think his heart was in it because he soon stopped when I said that I would not be having the jab.
I have a number of medical conditions that I have managed to keep in equilibrium. I take eight different drugs each day. I will not risk an untested drug playing havoc with my body.
The good lady told them several weeks ago (when they called after we ignored their letters) that she wasn’t feeling well enough and would let them know when she was better, then came the call for me but i was out at work, she told them the same, since then not heard a peep.
The more they push this untested treatment the more determined are we not to comply, not having any tests either, anything could be on that bloody stick they ram up to the base of your brain.
The whole farce stinks.
First I was contacted by my surgery. I told the lady I didn’t want it and she didn’t seem surprised and didn’t try to persuade me. She said she would make a note so that I wouldn’t be called again.
The contacts I’ve had since I think were centrally generated. One letter, I think one text and two unanswered voicemails on my mobile. (I searched for the number and it was one which many people said was about the not-a-vaccine.
I’ve had nothing for maybe a month now.
The post title made me think of Oh Well which is a mildly amusing song by Fleetwood Mac. I have had the fizzer jab and am now getting reminders to have the follow up jab while there are no appointments available.
It is interesting to watch the government and media being torn between claiming that vaccines are needed and claiming that they are both effective and not effective because they want to keep the crisis going as long as possible.
Four texts, two letters and two phone calls from the GP; my reply to the calls was to ring back when the trials are completed. When will that be? I asked, …..errr, errr. Oh that’ll be 2023, I’ll expect a call in two years, bye.
Why can’t the drones at the DWP chasing errant fathers for unpaid child support show this sort of dogged persistence, I wonder..?
Odd that isn’t it? DWP seems to give up very easily – too easily- in these cases.
Going back to the subject in question, my experience, as someone who has studied the issue of covid vaccinations, is now less worried about it than I used to be and now has no problem with having a covid vaccination, is actually getting one. For various reasons I had to reschedule the appointment that I had in late March. However I subsequently found that not only could I not get an appointment at what I would say was a reasonable time (I’m being offered at least one month ahead) I’m also being offered appointments at vaccination centres that are far too distant for me to be comfortable with (just in case there is an adverse reaction I don’t want to be 20 odd miles away) and I’m not being offered appointments that fit in with childcare and other responsibilities. I’m being offered June dates now, at a centre 20 miles away, at times when I should be picking my child up from school. It’s a complete mess.
I’ve tried to book on the NHS covid vaccination site but to no avail, the NHS 119 vaccination service is worse than useless and my GP is about as much use as a chocolate teapot telling me that there are no vaccination centres open locally yet others near me are getting vaccinated at centres I’m being told are not operational. I’m also being told that there is now a ‘shortage of vaccines’.
My experience has begun to make me think that the Government’s vaccine roll out has not been going as smoothly as the government and the media are telling us it is. The vaccine system, although better than that of some other countries, seems to be being hampered by the usual NHS sclerotic bureaucracy that royally screws up everything it touches. A great start to vaccination has turned into a complete cock up.
Sorry to be OT but I saw this story and immediately thought of you, this having being one of your subjects in the past.
https://notalwaysright.com/putting-the-fun-back-in-funeral/232803/
“The funeral went well. I didn’t tell anyone it was for our pet goldfish, though.”
Must remember that one.
Oh, that’s good.
Multiple texts, multiple phone calls so far.
I take the advice of the drug addled actors from Grange Hill, and ‘Just Say No’.
Family badgering me too, though rqrelynsee them so not too much of a problem. I’m 49 ffs, I’m at more risk from the vaccine.
“Just Say No”
That’s what I did – and the lady seemed rather stumped! I’m waiting to see how long before I get another call. It’s a bit like telling E.ON that I don’t want smart meters – and now they’ve started emailing me reminders for meter readings, despite me sending them every month for many years.
These bastards appear determined to wear us down…
Granite wears very slowly and I have a will of granite. I’ve blocked their number.
“Just Say No”
Has been my motto to all peer pressure things I feel/believe are wrong or harmful since long before Grange Hill campaign: alcohol/drunk, dope, speed etc
I’ve had three letters, no calls/texts – not taking their experimental drug
@FH211
Don’t know what you’re reading that persuades you to take it. More evidence of downsides released everyday. Also of blackmail and bribery to coerce people to take – West Virginia: $100 to sell your soul to drugs for 16-35 yo
The writers of Quackwatch, Respectful Insolence and Science Based Medicine are what has persuaded me. The microbiologist behind Debunk the Funk has been pretty influential as well. I completely agree that I dislike the blackmail bribery and coercion about all this as that’s not the way to get a big take up of vaccination. The way to get big take up of vaccines is to show people that the alternative to vaccination is worse than a disease as was the case with Polio and Smallpox. There were queues around blocks to get these vaccines when they came out because people could see the advantages of them.
Polio and smallpox are stable pathogens, so vaccination is highly effective. RNA viruses on the other hand are a bit hit and miss. Due to their tendency to mutate, this year’s vaccine may well be ineffective come the following season, hence they are already talking booster jabs in September. As with flu, there is a logic to taking a punt on the strain likely to be dominant that year and vaccinating the most vulnerable. Mass vaccination for a seasonal RNA virus is OTT. Using the population at large as a mass trial is unethical.
Agree with you on Polio and Smallpox. Agree also that RNA viruses do have a tendency to mutate and that is something that needs to be taken into account as it does with flu viruses. The problem with covid19 is that although it is highly likely going to end up as a seasonal virus along the lines of flu, unlike flu the vast majority of people have not yet encountered it and therefore have no natural immunity to it. This is one logical reason for a mass vaccination programme and it is a programme that appears to be working although as I said earlier, access to the vaccine is not as good as the govt and the NHS is telling the population it is.
Like you I was worried that the covid vaccine was unproven on the grounds that unlike flu vaccines and vaccines for MMR, TB etc, the approval time appears to have been shortened. However this approval time seems to have been shortened because govts have thrown massive amounts of money and resources at this problem something that pharma companies in ordinary times may not be willing to do as there’s not as much money to be made from vaccines as there is from making cardiac or cancer medicines for the Western markets.
I’ve looked back at the history of mRNA vaccine tech and it’s not as revolutionary as some may think, the theory behind mRNA vaccination goes back to the mid 1970’s and the idea has been studied practically in the lab since the SARS Cov1 outbreak in the early 21st century.
There are ethical issues I admit with mass vaccination against a novel illness especially when the curative or preventative agent is relatively new but there are greater moral hazards in the policy of lockdowns, government authoritarianism and the exploitation of the crisis by some severely bad political actors such as the authoritarian Left and the Green Marxists. From reading the writings of microbiologists I’m confident that vaccination the way out of this mess and I said as such at the beginning. But having said that I find much of the coercion distasteful.
I believe that covid19 will become endemic and a combination of naturally acquired and artificial immunity will eventually relegate it to the position of seasonal influenza, a disease that is fatal to some but where most are able to shrug it off.
I have never disputed the possibility that vaccination may prove to be a nett good in this instance. My concerns have been centred around the rush to market and even taking your point at face value, we do not have any long term data and won’t for some years. My position is pretty much summed up in the link that Clive left here. I no longer have any trust in government, media or the NHS (who left another voicemail this morning). This isn’t paranoia, it is a consequence of the persistent lies and misinformation they have been spouting – masks, anti-social distancing, lockdowns etc.
Therefore I am faced with an internal conflict. Given that there are reasonable and persuasive arguments on both sides, I am left with my gut and my gut says no – no liability, no trust pretty much sums it up.
People may not have encountered SARS-CoV-2 until last year, but a sizeable part of the population must have been exposed to various other coronaviruses over the years and it’s possible/probable that this would confer some protection – the idea that we are all completely naive just isn’t true. Our immune response is not just about specific antibodies but B- and T-cells too, for example. I simply haven’t heard a convincing argument why the situation should warrant mass vaccination, much less why it’s so urgent that the usual safeguards should be so blithely ignored.
@FH211
this approval time seems to have been shortened
It is not Approved/Licensed, it’s still in trial. It has ’emergency use’ permission as no other treatments available [HCQ, Invermectin etc don’t exist – like Sweden, South Dakota, Florida no longer exist]
Our world in data has some interesting figures which show that the IRF is higher than 0.3%. The world average is 3% whilst the UK is slightly higher at about 3.5%
IFR of 3.5% – absolute BS, even CFR is not that high. If it was, explain Diamond Princess.
You seem to have descended into Covid Paranoia, seek help asap before you infect your children. Are you cleaning/decontaminating everything?
Read:
If it’s so beneficial & safe why the bribery, coercion and punishment to take an unlicensed experimental drug in phase three trials until 2023?
All this lunacy for a disease with a 99.9% survival rate if symptoms develop
– Diamond Princess: 3,711 passengers and crew members, median age 56. Seven deaths all 70+
Agreed that the vaccine is emergency use but the facility to approve new drugs for emergency use has been around for a number of years. In 2017 the US FDA published guidance as to the conditions that need to be met for EUA to be given. The emergency use of a medicine to meet a need is not a singular thing connected to covid vaccines, EUA can apply to any medicine.
I can explain Diamond Princess to a certain extent. Those who go on cruises are the more sprightly and healthy elderly along with younger people who are in the main less susceptible to covid. There would be very few on board who would be in the very high risk categories of the sort that could be found in care homes which in many countries have been epicentres of infection. With regards to Diamond Princess, it is notable that those who died were in the age group that would normally be expected to die from covid.
Whilst there are some drug regimes that look promising with regards to the treatment of covid, such as some of the medicines being studied in Israel, HCQ is a busted flush https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2772922?guestAccessKey=39a5ea0f-7853-478d-9f94-6e83c06cc89b&utm_source=silverchair&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_alert-jama&utm_content=olf&utm_term=110920 As for Invermectin that is an anti parasitical drug and not an antiviral, also there is scant evidence that it is effective against respiratory viruses. With regards national and sub national figures, Sweden had to step back from its previous policy and in Florida vaccination has caused the outbreak to effectively die off with very few deaths occurring there now. The same I believe applies to Texas. Also those states that, unlike New York and countries like the UK that did not send infected elderly people from hospitals to care homes, have had a lower death rate.
I’ve been forced to change my mind on covid not because I’ve succumbed to covid paranoia, but because I have had friends who have been pretty severely ill because of this disease. Some of them have contracted it despite the fact that both they and those around them abided strictly by sanitary restrictions which undermines the argument that lockdowns rather than vaccines have caused the death rate in Britain to drop.
As regards trustable figures, finding them is I admit a challenge. However I’ve become less confident in the much trumpeted 0.3% figure that gets bandied about a lot. World In Data is probably the best of a bad bunch when it comes to figures. You may disagree with the 3.5% IFR but what I’m seeing from looking at various sources is that even if this is wrong, the IFR is definitely higher than 0.3%.
I still believe that in the future the lockdowns will be seen as a big mistake as what they did was not prevent infections but merely push infections down the road chronologically. They might have bought time to develop a vaccine that is based on scientific study into mRNA vaccines that was already ongoing into vaccines for SARS1, Rabies and other diseases, but we will not know that until all this is over. We have been somewhat lucky with vaccines as this disease came at a time when the science of mRNA vaccination was coming to fruition, if it had happened in say the early 1990’s then there would have been no vaccine as the technology was not advance enough to create one and we could have been in the very high mega death casualty levels. As regards the lockdowns I believe that they’ve done a massive amount of damage and eventually the death toll caused either directly or indirectly by them may exceed that of covid itself. We will just have to wait and see.
FH211 I too am puzzled by your about turn. As I read it there is a 99.7% chance of recovery from COVID (a statistic which I have yet to see challenged) whereas there is a > 1% chance of suffering from Vaccine side effects, including possible death. In addition the so called vaccine does NOT prevent you from getting Covid or if you have it of transmitting it to someone else. I found this to be a well reasoned argument as to reasons for NOT getting the jab. http://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/04/13/18-reasons-i-wont-be-getting-a-covid-vaccine Up to you of course.
Burning Platform is wrong on a number of issues. Two of the most obvious are regarding liability. Although the companies themselves are immune from liability that doesn’t mean that Governments do not have to pay those injured severely where it can be shown that the vaccine is to blame. The second inaccuracy is regarding the animal studies. specifically the ferret study. I’ve looked into this and this was not only using a vaccine protocol different from the covid vax one but was also a study unrelated to Covid19 instead it was an early study into SARS Cov One.
Without a doubt there are people who suffer from adverse reactions to covid vaccinations just as there are those who have adverse reactions to other medications and vaccines. However from my own observation and studies of this subject the vast majority of adverse reactions are relatively minor and transient. I’ve not yet seen any credible reports of large numbers of deaths caused by the vaccination although there have been reports coincidental deaths which is to be expected in any large cohort of people whether it be those being vaccinated or those attending a a large public event. Just because a person dies after being vaccinated does not necessarily mean that the vaccine has caused the death.
I’ve changed my view on vaccination because I’ve been presented with evidence that supports vaccination but that doesn’t change my view that lockdowns may well be a ‘cure’ worse than the disease.
Let me start with a positive. I believe that history will show that vaccination is a nett good. However, I am still refusing it for the following reasons:
I am, of course, aware that liability has been taken by governments. This itself is a concern. It undermines my trust in the product makers that they have passed off responsibility for any liability to the taxpayer and as a taxpayer who was not asked, I object. This is an ethical matter and one I’m not prepared to agree with.
We have no long term data. Despite my general belief that things will be okay, I am not prepared to take an experimental vaccine when we do not know how it will pan out in the long term. Without that knowledge I am unable to make an informed decision. If the virus was highly virulent with a high mortality rate, I would take a different view – the balance of risks would be in favour of taking the vaccine. As it is, there is no such balance of risks. The mortality rate for Covid is similar to seasonal flu and I don’t bother with the vaccine for that, either.
I don’t take kindly to being lied to and I object to being put under pressure to take something that I simply do not need and am unable to make an informed decision about. So, no. And no liability, no trust still stands.
You make some really good points there. I certainly agree that the liability has been hived off to the taxpayer and this may well have been down to the fact that the Govt was presented with a choice, give us immunity backed up by taxpayer cash or we won’t work on vaccines? I agree that there’s no long term data on this vaccine but mRNA has been tested in the past.
I most certainly agree with you that the death rate makes a big difference in deciding whether to be vaccinated or not. A 3% death toll for covid is much less of an issue than smallpox with a death rate of 30% or Bubonic Plague which has a death rate of 50*60%.
Like you I’m extremely worried about the coercion and I believe that it is counterproductive. For example: I’ve got a contact in an ‘enriched’ part of Britain who was on the verge of saying ‘yes’ to the vaccine but he keeps getting texts saying ‘come to your appointment,bring all members of your family’ to be vaccinated. These texts are obviously aimed at members of certain religious/cultural groups,but the hectoring insistence of these texts has put my contact off of having the vaccine.
Our world in data has some interesting figures which show that the IRF is higher than 0.3%. The world average is 3% whilst the UK is slightly higher at about 3.5%. See here: https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid As regards the claims that the vaccines are directly related this may well be a case of correlation not being the same thing as causation. If you have any cohort of people taking part in a vaccine programme you will have some die for unrelated reasons,statistically it could not be otherwise, In a way it’s like the false claims that MMR is related to autism, some children will develop symptoms of autism after being vaccinated against MMR but that does not mean that the vaccine has caused this condition, these children would have developed this condition anyway. When you get millions of people being vaccinated for a disease you are bound to have some of them die from unrelated conditions or undiagnosed conditions but that doesn’t mean the vaccine caused them. You also get cases where people have had what are claimed are adverse reactions but which are not. Respectful Insolence has a good example of this in their discussion of the Tiffany Dover case where a nurse fainted after her covid vaccine and the anti vaxxers falsely claimed that she had died. https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/12/31/bells-palsy-and-fake-covid-19-vaccine-aes/
@FH211
Re:
– https://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/2021/05/04/ah-well/#comment-46609
– https://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/2021/05/04/ah-well/#comment-46610
In 2017 the US FDA published guidance as to the conditions that need to be met for EUA to be given
Yes. Which states EUA only if no other treatment available. That is the most egregious aspect of vaccine EUA
HCQ is not a ‘busted flush’ it is safe and works.
So what if Invermectin is an anti parasitical drug not an anti-viral, it’s been repurposed is safe and works. That’s all that matters
Warfarin is a repurposed rodenticide used for decades by NHS, it worked. That’s all that matters
HCQ, Invermectin etc are attacked for political & financial reasons
– Trump endorsed HCQ (after Fauci did)
– No large profits in either, both off-patent and generic
Steroids are not anti-viral and are used, but are expensive as in-patent
Those who go on cruises are the more sprightly and healthy elderly along with younger people
Wrong on both counts on Diamond Princess
First, more sprightly and healthy elderly do their own holiday. Older with prior health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and/or immunosuppression etc opt for cruises
Second Median Age of all onboard of 56 shows dearth of young as do cases
Passengers: 2,611 , Crew: 1,100
A total of 634 people tested positive among 3,063 tests as at 20 February 2020
Of 634 cases, a total of 313 cases were female and six were aged 0–19 years, 152 were aged 20–59 years and 476 were 60 years and older
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.10.2000180
Why, when all 3,711 were living in a giant Petri dish did only 634 test positive? Innate Immunity only plausible reason
IFR is Not 3.5%, if it was then after 18 months we’d have seen hundreds of millions of deaths world wide, not the current 3.2 million
It is not 0.3% either, it’s 0.1%-0.15%, similar to ‘Flu
Stop scaring yourself
https://www.samizdata.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/signal-2021-04-28-082718.jpeg
Some of them have contracted it despite the fact that both they and those around them abided strictly by sanitary restrictions
Good God man, the sanitary restrictions were and are theatre. It’s air-borne, not formite, faecal or water-borne. CDC admitted this last year
You clearly have regressed and are suffering from Covid Anxiety which I can not treat
My advise is to seek help and read https://lockdownsceptics.org/todays-update/ every day and links in daily round-up
Today brings:
Get well [sane] soon
God bless
On HCQ, it doesn’t seem to be the game-changer we hoped for. Sebastian Rushworth, who I’ve come to respect for his sober and dispassionate analyses, concludes that at best there might be some not very robust evidence for HCQ mitigating severe symptoms if given very early (within three days of onset): https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/03/04/hydroxychloroquine-for-covid-lifesaving-or-useless/
The real scandal is the negligence in not investigating it thoroughly as soon as Covid-19 emerged, given that it had been identified as possibly having anti-coronavirus properties following the initial SARS outbreak in 2002-04. And the obstinate refusal to consider it for blatantly political reasons is unforgivable and needs to be added to the list of crimes for which people should pay.
On the Diamond Princess you are spot-on. The insistence on looking this gift horse of a case study in the mouth is inexplicable.
A lot of people thought that HCQ would be a game changer but it was not. I agree with you that potential treatments should have been investigated much earlier. There may be other drugs used for other conditions that might be or might have been useful.
Whilst I agree with Dr Rushworth on the issue of HCQ, and that his claims on post vaccine thrombosis – a 1:23000 risk – do need to be be examined more closely there’s stuff that worries me about Dr Rushworth. It worries me that Dr Rushworth reached out to a Dr Malcom Kendrick, who denies the negative effect of cholesterol and he’s also an advisor to an American organisation that is associated with anti cancer quackery. The fact that Dr Rushworth sees fit to worth with such a character as Kendrick rings alarm bells for me.
Your point on innate immunity is a good one. It may explain to some extent the relatively low death rate on Diamond Princess. My own view is that Covid19 has been around much longer than originally assumed. My wife and I contracted suspected Covid back in the early part of 2020 and we were really ill, much worse than we would be from a mere flu. This infection came shortly after we took a number of trips on Khan’s mobile petri dish aka the London Underground in January. This has led me to believe that this disease may well have been circulating around in London from November 19 at least.
Thank you for the information about the age cohort on DP. Many cruise lines such as Disney etc are not aimed at the elderly but some cruise lines are, something I found out when I worked for a short while as an assistant to a shipping pharmacist where I also found out that the sickbays of the ships that catered for the elderly /Americans were considerably better stocked and managed than those on cargo ships.
My friends who contracted Covid and got it bad almost completely isolated themselves. They are a couple where the husband is younger than the wife and the wife suffers from various other medical conditions. Their only contact with the outside world from what I can gather was with NHS staff who visited which suggests to me that the infection may have been brought to them by these NHS staff.
Whilst I trust the vaccine,having looked into it in great detail and studied the history of mRNA technicques, that doesn’t mean I trust the UK government. This emergency has been exploited by those who do not have the concept of personal liberty at heart and these people are not just in elected positions but in the Civil Service as well.