A group of medical researchers and bioethicists have written a comprehensive assessment of Covid vaccine coercion policies, encompassing passports, mandates and segregated lockdowns. They argue in no uncertain terms that these measures are “scientifically questionable” and “ethically problematic”.
While most of the points in their article will be familiar to readers of the Daily Sceptic, the article is valuable in virtue of its sheer breadth and attention to detail. I’ll try to provide a brief summary.
Kevin Bardosh and colleagues begin by noting that the publicly communicated rationale for Covid vaccine policies has shifted over time, from ‘ending the pandemic’ and ‘getting back to normal’, to reducing the burden on the healthcare system. (Such shifts do not inspire confidence that policymakers really know what they’re doing.)
The authors spend the bulk of the article discussing the harmful unintended consequences of Covid vaccine policies, drawing on insights from the behavioural sciences, law and bioethics.
They cite evidence that the coercive nature of Covid vaccine policies is likely to reduce compliance with other public health measures, including recommendations to take existing vaccines (which have much longer track records than the Covid vaccines). This owes to mechanisms of psychological reactance and loss of trust in the health authorities.
The authors argue that such effects will be compounded by the use of stigmatisation as a public health strategy, and by the dissemination of misleading or false claims on the part of health authorities (such as Anthony Fauci’s claim that, once vaccinated, “you become a dead end to the virus”).
As regards the former, the authors have compiled a list of some of the most incendiary statements made by politicians about unvaccinated people.
Emmanuel Macron admitted his aim was “pissing them off”. Justin Trudeau described them as “extremists who don’t believe in science”, adding “they’re often misogynists, also often racists”. Naftali Bennett accused them of “endangering their health, those around them and the freedom of every Israeli citizen”.
Yet as Bardosh and colleagues note, many unvaccinated people had perfectly good reasons for remaining unvaccinated, such as being in a low-risk category or having natural immunity from previous infection.
Turning to the legality of Covid vaccine policies, the authors note that many measures were merely decrees, passed under states of emergency in the absence of normal democratic governance. As a result, injured parties (such as those who lost their livelihood) have had fewer or no opportunities for proper redress.
Vaccine passports also constitute a significant infringement on privacy, insofar as they require the sharing of medical information with people other than one’s doctor, including not only border officials, but owners of pubs, restaurants and nightclubs.
What’s more, vaccine mandates that disproportionately restrict people’s access to things like work, education and social life can be considered violations of basic human rights, the authors argue. This may explain why the WHO’s Director of Immunisation said in 2020, “I don’t think we envision any countries creating a mandate for vaccination.”
There are many other interesting observations in the paper itself, which is worth reading in full.
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Almost all of this woke nonsense is coming from children who’ve been groomed by delusional lefties. Time for the adults to say ‘NO’.
It’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ only with adults not wanting to take charge and just encouraging the children.
There is no noticeable difference, except size, between adults and children. Since the 1980 children have not progressed emotionally and intellectually beyond the age of two.
Dawkins is confronting the consequences of his actions.
He showed his arrogance and at the same time his naivety in his book “The God Delusion” in which he must have thought he was being terribly clever comparing the belief in god to the belief in the flying spaghetti monster.
He failed to consider properly what useful functions religions play in society beyond what he thinks are childish attachments to god figures. Well now he knows. A society untethered from any religion will… produce a religion. And this one wants to stop him from using words he likes and tell him how he wants to think.
Religions clearly go through authoritarian phases and they need to be “tamed” – for lack of a better word. Christianity in Britain in the late 20th century was completely tamed and for the most part a harmless institution giving some stability to our society. Dawkins did his bit to destroy what was left of it. He can now deal with what has grown in its place.
Another example of a clever person who is actually a bit stupid.
There are hundreds of gods, but don’t worry! – yours is the best!
There are hundreds of theological and atheistic beliefs, Marcus, but don’t worry – yours is the best!
Atheism is not a belief, it is an absence of belief.
Atheism is a faith that there is no G(g)od(s).
“Dawkins is confronting the consequences of his actions”
The idea that he is in any way responsible for the collapse of Christianity in the UK is ridiculous.
Western societies have created their own religions, or idols at least: climate alarmism, diversity, identity politics, safetyism, etc.. They call them “the science” but as we know there is little if any science to support them. So they have become systems of beliefs instead and are being enforced in the way cults control their members, through the use of tyranny. We are all paying a terrible price for it too.
And yet the most hated of dictators is happy to state that “mothers are women and fathers are men”. A statement that our own politicians refute or at least shy away from, on the grounds of multiple phobias or isms.
This is beyond Orwellian, it is literally straight out of The Giver by Lois Lowry.
They called it “Precision of Language”.
Ditto for Brave New World.
Good on Dawkins. What ridiculous, disgusting and insulting terminology though. He is a controversial figure and I don’t agree with him on everything, for instance, did he not famously say that babies with Down’s Syndrome should be aborted? Anyway, with this farcical nonsense we are on the same page.
As an evolutionary biologist, engaging in a debate about religion, the question was put to him whether religion served an evolutionary purpose and he answered yes. Asked then what it was, he said he didn’t know. Which is fair enough.
But it didn’t seem to make him reconsider his militant advocacy for atheism. Seems like quite a few scientists have a proclivity for just going for it and worrying about the consequences later. Mainly those who stray beyond scientific enquiry and into policy making.
The collapse of the C of E is down to the leadership of the C of E, not to people like Dawkins.
I have a very un PC and non woke response to Orwellian garbage such as this:
F#ck Off!
Let’s just ban communication. Lot easier.
Could this be a wind up?
Hi Stewart and all on this thread within a thread. I gave up my religion when I was 15 or 16 and was for many years a Dawkins fanboy. I was active on his website in the early days when he used to actually add his comments below the line. I’m still an atheist and I have not found much sense in any of the new forms of religion that many of our friends in our loose sceptic alliance hold dear. But as Stewart says, religion and the CofE in particular have “useful functions … in society” and I have come to regret the loss of an institution that, for a while, on some questions, stood in opposition to government. In the old days, we had the government, the church, the media and the crown all competing with each other. Now the government is in complete charge … and dare I say, Heaven help us.
Richard Dawkins was the Noah Harari of his day. Rather than claiming to be on the side of Humanity, he would do well to contemplate the dystopian world that he helped create in the name of scientific rationalism and ask himself if he really is so sure there is no God to whom he will be called to give account.
The academics calling for this gibberish are most likely all Ph.Ds, a credential that increasingly demonstrates a very specific kind of stupidity.
As a devout atheist and crusader against Judaeo-Christian beliefs, Richard Dawkins finds himself swimming in a cesspool that is partly of his making. Nevertheless, I’m sure he believes that secularism is going very well.
Dawkins was also a lockdown fanatic and Force-vax ’em all enthusiast. This came on top of him already being an unpleasant person with a god delusion.
Didn’t know that (your 1st sentence).
in which case, not sure his intervention is helpful here.
one of those people whom one would be glad when/if they realise “Silence is Golden”.
I had to read and write papers on several of Dawkins’ publications for various degrees. His own fanatical scientism and ‘contemptuous ridicule’ of anything not deemed acceptable to The Science™ – often using the same emotive language as the most staunch religionists – shone through it all. Even some of the most committed atheists were embarrassed by The God Delusion. He is a True Believer right enough but it now appears that even he has his limits.
A rose by any other name is still a rose.Is a woman by any other name still a woman?