A Sincere Plea to the Pro-Vax Mandaters

We need to talk.

We need to reach across the vociferously divided opinions regarding covid vaccinations before families and communities tear themselves apart, and before those in power permanently divide us.

Readers will know that I have written, with urgency, against lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

But I hope that somehow with this essay I can reach out to those who disagree with me, to give them a sense of why people like me disagree, and why we are so very disturbed by looming vaccine mandates in order to live a normal life.

To begin with, I do not believe that in this current moment it is right to divide people into two camps - those who are pro-covid vaccines and those who are anti-covid vaccines.

I know many people who strongly believe in the covid vaccines. I know some who strongly believe in the covid vaccines which are not Pfizer or Moderna - because of the novelty of the mRNA platform. 

I know people who are strongly for the vaccine, but anti-mandate. I know people who are strongly against covid vaccines, full stop.

Those who read my writing are generally against the vaccines, although some are simply against the mandates. I am not sure, to be honest.

I myself have no problem with adults choosing to take the vaccine. I would rather they did not take Pfizer or Moderna - as mRNA vaccines have been discontinued in many countries for the young, which to me is enough of a warning sign. But that is not up to me, and I understand people have different levels of acceptable risk - regarding both covid and vaccines.

If, with informed consent, you believe it is in your interest to take the vaccine, I would never dispute your right to do so. I do not give medical advice - unlike many other online writers.

What concerns me right now, though, is what I am seeing the average middle-class person, and average media house, purporting online and in conversation - that if we all get the vaccine, we will end the covid crisis.

I hope this essay reaches some of the people who believe this.

I want to say to you: I understand. 

I understand the desire to protect yourself, your loved ones, and the desire to follow the experts’ advice in getting us back to normal.

At the same time, I desperately want you to hear a voice from the other side - a voice which I hope you will not find judgmental, but sympathetic.

Over these past two years, I have read almost everything there is to read on covid. Former work colleagues of mine can attest that in February 2020 I was skipping work meetings to avoid crowds. 

I warned people that many, many people could get sick and die. I listened to the reports of a highly infectious virus emerging from Wuhan, with a mortality rate much higher than influenza.

But - I kept reading. I followed the studies. (Later I would read the data from the vaccine companies.) And I quickly learned that while the virus was a serious issue, the measures we were taking would not be productive and did not address risk stratification between different age groups.

Polar explorers could not hide from the Spanish flu. Locking people up indoors was just as likely to spread the virus than stop it - because it was already everywhere before we even started worrying about it.

Soldiers in the street anywhere should never be seen unless there is a threat of foreign invasion. 

My main contention was that there was no evidence any of the measures would help - but we definitely knew they would cause chaos, poverty, disrupted medical care for other diseases, suicide, overdoses, and general social depression.

And I think I was right. 

Where did lockdowns stop covid? Some island countries far from mainlands could delay the arrival, but generally there is no correlation between restriction levels and rate of transmission. Today, the country with one of the harshest lockdowns, Peru, is on record with one of the highest death rates.

We have seen the same regarding masks. There was never any strong evidence that would justify impinging upon people's liberty in such a visceral, physical way - perhaps permanently. You will not find any difference between American states who mandated masks or not, in terms of virus spread. 

Nobody can wear a mask properly. We all touch them. We all take them off all the time. And even if we could wear them properly, the virus is far too small to be kept out. A mask cannot keep smoke in or out, for example, and smoke particles are exponentially larger than virus molecules.

Here we are, almost two years later, still trying the same things. 

For many of us, the truth is we would rather die than have our kids wear masks for the rest of their lives.

I know some people would strongly disagree with that notion - but that is the great big divide of opinion we need to understand.

I know I am meant to be writing about vaccines, but I bring these other issues up first to explain why people with my beliefs and attitudes became such a sizable group. 

The experts lost our trust, perhaps permanently. They told us we just needed to do these things to flatten the curve. They lied. They never added hospital capacity. They never honestly intended to restrict the measures to any kind of clear time frame. 

For some citizens, fear of government control and tyranny is greater than the fear of covid. 

This made us sceptical when the vaccines were sold as the cure to all this.

Again, I know why people are so in favour of mass vaccination.

Of course I agree that we need to end the covid crisis. I am on your side when it comes to this.

But I strongly believe you need to consider the strong possibility that mass vaccination cannot end the covid crisis, and that it may in fact lead to future social harms even worse than covid.

Let me explain.

From what I read in the media and online, people genuinely believe the vaccines stop the spread.

Governments and businesses, by banning unvaccinated from public spaces, propound this view strongly.

I beg of you - those of you who believe this - take a moment to look at the facts. It simply is not true.

In country after country, even in those where they have run out of adults to vaccinate, the spread continues.

Germany, Gibraltar, the UK, South Korea, the US, Portugal, and Singapore all show this without a shadow of a doubt.

Higher case numbers are occurring despite mass vaccination.

For my fellow South Africans who believe our relatively low rates of vaccination are preventing a return to normality, consider that children are still wearing masks all over vaccinated Europe, that many of those countries are still restricting interactions, and they still have quarantines, even for the vaccinated.

Consider Germany, where it is impossible to go into most public spaces unvaccinated.

Look at their case numbers, despite the vast majority of their adults being jabbed once, twice, or three times:

We have to face reality - the vaccines will not stop people getting covid.

Scientific studies have said the same. Consider this from The Lancet:

High COVID-19 vaccination rates were expected to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in populations by reducing the number of possible sources for transmission and thereby to reduce the burden of COVID-19 disease. Recent data, however, indicate that the epidemiological relevance of COVID-19 vaccinated individuals is increasing. In the UK it was described that secondary attack rates among household contacts exposed to fully vaccinated index cases was similar to household contacts exposed to unvaccinated index cases (25% for vaccinated vs 23% for unvaccinated). Peak viral load did not differ by vaccination status or variant type.

It is important to note here that it is not true that the vaccines were not designed to stop spread but rather to ease symptoms. Pfizer was given emergency approval because they purportedly showed that their vaccine reduced transmissions by 95%. Their trial data, in fact, never showed a reduction in mortality.

We know now this reduction in transmission has not proven to be the case. 

This means that vaccine passes for public spaces are illogical. There is no scientific reason to support them, and the only reason governments and businesses are enforcing them can only possibly be as a form of reward or punishment for getting vaccinated or not.

There are many people who support vaccine mandates or mass vaccination who know this and admit to this.

Their argument is that everybody should be vaccinated because otherwise hospital resources will be swallowed up by those who get seriously ill from covid being unvaccinated.

There are many flaws to this reasoning, however.

First of all, many human decisions put one at risk of being hospitalized. Riding a motorcycle, eating or drinking to excess, taking drugs, having dangerous sex, have all taken up massive amounts of hospital space. Marijuana legalization has put many young people at risk of schizophrenia, for example. In fact, obesity by far clogs up hospitals the most. Even with regards to covid, a supermajority of patients hospitalized have been obese. If you propose vaccine mandates for this reason, rationally you should also punish the obese, the sexually promiscuous, and most likely ban alcohol consumption. 

Second, it is by no means clear that the unvaccinated are taking up disproportional amounts of hospital space in highly vaccinated countries. It seems clear that those who are vulnerable to covid, the infirm elderly, and the obese, require the most attention for covid regardless of their vaccination status. In the UK, 80% of covid deaths are in the vaccinated. And the death numbers by vaccination show that while the vaccine does offer some protection for the elderly, it really has no measurable benefit for the young:

I am not saying the vaccines are useless - I am saying they are not a cure, and our rhetoric about them needs to reflect that.

It is also wrong to say the unvaccinated will create new mutant variants.

The latest variant was found in the vaccinated and experts have never said that unvaccinated breed variants. This is impossible because the vaccinated are getting the virus too and passing it on, which is how mutations occur. Hear one example from a virologist:

king Keith @KaConfessor

@bonglez @Radio702 You had a virologist schooling you and yet you're still pushing this propaganda.

Third, we are worryingly not seeing reductions of overall mortality in vaccinated countries. Aids drugs dented mortality rates in South Africa significantly and quickly. (And we never mandated them!) Unprecedented mass covid vaccinations have not done the same.

Look at European death rates. Deaths are running higher for younger citizens in 2021:

The same is true in the US.

What does this mean?

Covid is here to stay. No vaccines, no masks, no quarantines, are going to magically make it disappear.

We simply have to choose when to begin living normally again. 

Those at risk can choose to be vaccinated, and they can also choose to lose weight and be healthier, as covid most often kills the unhealthy (not always). 

Let me make my final point.

Knowing that the vaccines do not stop the spread, that they are not massively reducing death rates, and that there is no real community benefit to them, how can a mandate be anything but truly harmful to societies?

For the near-negligible community gains of vaccinating everybody (and many scientists believe there are medical risks to it too - such as vaccine injuries and vaccine ‘escape’ variants), we would be shattering the norms of free societies.

Freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedom not to carry around medical data, would all be gone - forever.

A vaccine mandate would be permanent because the vaccines fade and need to be done over and over again. Our children will likely be jabbed more than once a year with a vaccine they do not need, for the rest of our lives

That flies in the face of all historical medical ethics.

Let me say it again, we all want this to end. I truly understand the pro-vaxxers and I sympathize with their position.

But we need to face the facts now.

Vaccines will not end covid. But they will create a radically different society from the one in which you grew up.

The solution to all this is obvious - the end to covid panic needs to be similar to the way we ended Aids panic - despite Aids deaths continuing, and despite the Aids fatality rate being exponentially higher than that of covid.

Develop medicine and treatment. Offer it to those who want it. Promote health. Stop the daily death and case counts in the media. 

And then return to life. 

Life is a precious gift. We owe it to our children to pass it on, in full.

Enough now.