Creating a two-tier society where freedoms and opportunities are contingent on whether or not you have received a novel (and not fully tested or licensed) vaccine, and having to reveal that fact to strangers, was never a sound approach from a civil liberties point of view. But as the evidence grows that the vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission, the medical case against this new medical apartheid falls apart as well.
The Covid vaccines were originally intended to protect the vulnerable from serious disease and death, following which life could then return to normal. At some point, though, a new idea emerged: that everyone (including children) should be vaccinated, not in order to protect themselves (their risk was low) but to provide further protection to the vulnerable. Similarly, the idea appeared that the fully vaccinated should have freedoms that the unvaccinated did not, because they were no longer able to transmit the virus.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that this idea is incorrect, and the vaccines do not meaningfully prevent infection or transmission, particularly from new variants. Yesterday, Lockdown Sceptics reported on the new data from Israel showing that the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against infection had dropped to 64% during the current Covid surge, down from 94% the previous month. (Effectiveness against serious disease as a result of becoming infected held up much better at 93%.) Public Health England has already reported that the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine has dropped to 60% against the Delta variant. Even these new lower figures may be overestimates, since Israel reports that 55% of new cases are in fully vaccinated people, and since 60% of the country is fully vaccinated this suggests the vaccines are doing very little to prevent infection (a vaccine efficacy estimate on those raw figures would give just 18.5%).
There have also been major outbreaks in highly vaccinated countries like Bahrain, Seychelles, Maldives and Chile.
Underlining the point, the Swiss Doctor has highlighted a case where “a vaccinated Israeli caught the Indian variant in London, infected another vaccinated person in Israel, who infected another vaccinated person, who infected about 80 students at a high school party”.
To some, the idea that the vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission comes as no surprise. As Peter Doshi wrote in the BMJ in October, the trials were not designed to establish this. Furthermore, the vaccines do not produce mucosal IgA antibodies, which have been shown to play a crucial role in fighting infection in the early stages.
Time for governments to abandon the idea that vaccination provides meaningful protection against infection or transmission, and thus any idea of vaccinating people to protect others, or conferring privileges on the vaccinated, including for international travel, as though they will no longer spread the virus.
Governments should make clear that vaccination is purely for personal protection, and therefore also a personal choice in regard to personal risk. There is no social obligation to get vaccinated to protect others, no benefit to vaccinating children, and no warrant for restricting the freedoms and opportunities of the unvaccinated or imposing on them extra costs such as quarantine.
Some will argue that this ‘failure’ of the vaccines means we need to continue restrictions in some form, possibly indefinitely. Indeed, most alarmingly, SAGE appears to believe this. In minutes from April, published this week, the scientific advisers state: “Ongoing baseline measures and sustained long-term behavioural change will be required to control a resurgence in infections.”
The Government has already conceded that local lockdowns (or tiers) may return with new variants that evade vaccines and that it has retained emergency powers for that reason.
But this is the wrong conclusion. The correct conclusion is that by vaccinating the vulnerable we have done what we can to protect them. Indeed, by imposing restrictions on the whole of society for over a year now we have gone above and beyond what it is reasonable to impose on people in the hope of providing some additional protection for some people. Now they are jabbed we must return to normal and end the state of emergency, end all restrictions both in law and guidance, all restrictions on international travel, and cease all threats of re-imposing restrictions nationally or locally. Now that it is clear that vaccines don’t meaningfully prevent infection or transmission we must end all suggestion of special privileges for the vaccinated, and all obligation to be vaccinated to protect others.
The vaccines are imperfect, but we must accept we have reached the limit of what can reasonably be done to protect people – though we should certainly put more effort into finding and approving effective treatment options, especially cheap, repurposed drugs like ivermectin and fluvoxamine, just as we should have done from the start. We can develop booster shots targeting new variants, but like flu vaccines these are likely to have limited effectiveness and it is not reasonable to continue restrictions while we wait for these to arrive.
Time to accept we have done all we reasonably can and more to protect the vulnerable and return to living as a free people once again.
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Cool. But the money and sheep are still here:
https://www.thefp.com/p/taylor-swift-unites-america?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNTQ3NDkyOCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTM1OTQzMzU4LCJpYXQiOjE2OTE4MzQ2OTIsImV4cCI6MTY5NDQyNjY5MiwiaXNzIjoicHViLTI2MDM0NyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.TlbvddDzoWxFjghGbZdl4unjBQnQWpjf1obx2CZhKd8&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Nice song.
Typo – “So no one needs Anthony to come out in favour of a particular particular party.”
That’s particularly pernickety.
In fact it’s more than particularly pernickety, it’s particularly particularly pernickety.
I make no judgement, just pointing out a typo…
The choices were, complain about it, ignore it, update the article.
Thank you for playing.
Funny – I read that paragraph twice without noticing – and I speak as a dedicated pedant. Well observed!
Me too, and I was a proof-reader most of my professional life, with a similarly critical, some would say irritating eye. Some things simply escape you, and there’s no telling why, other than the fact that we usually scan rather than read. Sometimes it gets past a group of readers, such as the 19th century report of the Queen pissing over Westminster Bridge. Then again, there are the deliberate attempts to fool the editors, often practised by Kenny Everett, who was notorious for ‘going off script’ and finally warned that if he changed one word he would be taken off air. So here’s the exchange that got past them and was out there before they realised: “I want to join, but they won’t let me in”. “I’ll get you in, I’m a country member”. “OK, I’ll remember”.
How ironic that Rolling Stone took its name (in part) from a Bob Dylan protest song with lyrics in the same vein. I guess that like the Rolling Stones (band) it gradually became an Establishment rich kid.
Ad eventually knighted
…yes it’s often hard to watch the “mighty anarchists” of yesteryear who you have admired all your life turn into snivelling establishment shills…I still cringe when I think about Neil Young’s spat with Spotify, over Joe Rogan….and less said about ‘jab only’ participants at Foo Fighter gigs…..
This is the once great Eminem….LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wGb60nwiFk
I guess now we can stop looking for the guy we needed to unlock the prison cell and let Trump come out to be sworn in as POTUS.
Big kudos to Nick for gettin’ on his guitar geek!
My take from the RS article is that they really don’t know what to do with it: at one level they seem to recognise the aching need for decent, honest and skilful music with deeply meaningful lyrics, but on another level simply can’t deal with the fact that some of their pet ideologies are in the firing line. Wait until someone does a song about The Laptop From Hell…(blues riff, I reckon!)
On this theme for what it’s worth this song has kind of become my theme song since the covid nonsense started;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK0ZFpfn1cM
They and their audience are so ‘un-hip’ it great stuff, not only that they are called ‘The Whites’! it happens to be their name, 2 middle aged sisters and their Dad and I really like the pedal steel guitar player.
Like it
Nice. The audience is “horribly white”.
I’m very fond of this: Sweet Home Alabama / In The Practice Room #3 – YouTube
They seem to have 7 children…
I was prepared to dislike it, but, while it is rough and does not scan in places, it gave me bumps. More and more is needed.
The Rolling Stone publicity can only help him.
I think Five Times August is better:
https://youtu.be/oE3idi85jfQ
That was my first thought but hey, the more the better!
If we’re having a Sunday morning protest song vibe, James Roguski just forwarded this guy: some very slickly produced parodies. Groomin’ particularly disturbing
https://rumble.com/c/c-2244004
I hope you make money hand over fist, Mr Anthony. And I hope you keep sticking it to them and I hope you keep saying it how it is. Bring it on, brother.
I like the song. That said, we live in a time when humans in our part of the world have life just about as easy as it has even been possible to be. I sit in an airconditioned office moving buttons about for 36 hours a week, free coffee, heating, perfectly comfortable air, saving for old age, basically care free, etc etc.
I’m hardly working the fields for a pompous landowner, fending off barbarian attacks or making clay for 16 hours a day under a life debt.
I’d like to have had a family in a neighbourhood where all my friends and extended family could have afforded to live, surrounded by people I know and love. I think our quality of life has peaked sure, without fossil fuels and birth rates only propped up by invaders, it’s now on the down slope, but it wasn’t so bad. It’s just a shame, because it could be so much better.
Well put , I’ve said for a while that if you have lived in the Western World since WW2 you have exsisted in the BEST period of Human History since Man (&they,them,etc 😳)first drew breath !
Agree with all that, but “peados”? What happened to ‘paedos’? Lol.
Perhaps those with a predilection for Petit Pois?
Great article Nick, absolutely superb.
Brilliant song, great lyrics, and amazing passionate delivery. Good luck to him! He deserves it.
What is Rolling Stone and does it opinion matter to anyone with a brain to make their own assessment.
“Musically it’s simple, just four chords in the key of G minor, by my calculations,”
Not sure about ‘four chords in the key of G minor’ – he’s actually using the ubiquitous ‘lazy chord’ sequence’ which is I – V – vi – IV, with a ‘I’ chord in this case of B flat major. It’s the chord sequence used by every other pop song these days. See this, by Axis of Awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
The great advantage of this chord sequence is that melodies featuring very few note changes can be sung over the top of it – pefect for the vocally chalenged – which leaves less for Autotune to do.
I must get out more.
Thank you for this nice demonstration of They always watch but cannot see and they always listen but never hear.
I get my inside
From watch spider man
I’ve learnt a lot from Peter Parker
About dealing with the world.
Or from Youtube.
A virtual nickel offered to anyone who knows the song.
Another authentic artist for our times is the wonderful Five Times August.
Check him out on YouTube. You won’t be disappointed.
I will not be leaving quietly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NVnfM_H7TY
Add to the above
“Jason Aldean – Try That In A Small Town”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1_RKu-ESCY
which apparently is racist, as it notes that were you an Antifa type, and tried what they did in Portland and elsewhere in a “small town”, you’d get short shrift.
So clearly racist…
Good for Mr. Anthony. I raise a glass to him, and use the regular toast that my wife an I use…
“**** ’em all”.
Ah, protest songs of old:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9tDZ5lriIIc&feature=share
The inimitable Mr. Lehrer.
My favourite is Blind Joe: –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqdXJIrMuLA
That’s a good song although it could do with less reverb in the vocals. The musical accompaniment is also really good, ie, simple but effective. The lyrics are a bit stereotypical, but Rich men north of Richmond is a great line. That’s the kind of street music I’d spent money on instead of just – as usual – contemplating whether it’s feasible to throw pound coins at them until they turn to flight.
Listening to the pod.
No recognition that Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States in the American Civil War and it’s the most Northerly secessionist town.
Anthony isn’t claiming to live there.