I must admit that like a lot of other people I was very concerned about the apparent speed that the new Covid vaccines were brought in. This was especially the case as they are very much new tech and rely on messenger RNA (mRNA) rather than the traditional vaccine technologies of dead or attenuated viruses or bacteria. To the casual gaze they look somewhat experimental and it is this aspect of them that has been exploited by various anti-vaccination types. I was at first more than willing to wait until a vaccine for covid came in that was based on more traditional technologies and this is what I publicly stated. However, I’ve changed my view somewhat.
For the record it’s probably right and proper for me to state where I stand. I’m opposed to the anti-vaccination crowd and I’m opposed to them for very solid scientific and personal reasons. The first, scientific reason is that vaccines save lives. We no longer have people dying of Smallpox as it has been completely eliminated via vaccination and diseases like Polio, Diphtheria and Whooping Cough have been almost completely removed from Western nations because of vaccination programmes. Previous killer diseases like Tuberculosis are now a medical curiosity confined to migrants from TB endemic areas and among the homeless and is not slaughtering tens of thousands of Britons as the once did. The second, more personal reason is this: My child does not have to fear death or disablement due to preventable diseases and unlike my grandparents generation I do not have to shudder in fear of every childhood cough or every fever or every strange spot they may have. I have that luxury primarily because of vaccination.
I did have concerns about the mRNA vaccine for Covid but due to doing some digging I’m less concerned than I once was and I will explain why in a moment. I was inspired to write this article by a post by the author Mandy Baldwin which is up on AltNewsMedia and is about her decision to have the mRNA covid vaccine. Whilst I do not agree with all that she says, especially about masks, as I do not believe that they have been as effective as many would like to believe that they are, I share her view that a vaccine is probably the best way out of our current predicament.
Most of my concerns have been due to what seemed like an excessive speed of development of this vaccine but it was only when I started digging around that I found that there may not have been excessive speed it only seems that way. I was wary of the mRNA vaccination until I started to do some research. What I found was this: The theory, about using mRNA as a method of vaccination is not as recent as some people may like to think. The theory goes back to the early 1970’s. What has held up the use of mRNA for vaccination was a lack of knowledge and the practical ability about how to get the idea to work.
It is only in recent decades and indeed recent years that it has been possible to get mRNA past the body’s immune system in order to allow it to teach the immune system how to recognise a new type of infection. Without tech developed relatively recently it was very difficult if not impossible to get active ingredients into the cells without it first being destroyed by the immune system. There’s also been a lot of research done on SARS and MERS since the turn of the century which has provided a lot of the groundwork needed to create a Covid vaccine. The Covid vaccine has not appeared out of nowhere as some may think, but is based on a lot of research going back decades. Covid vaccines have not suddenly appeared, it has only seemed that way because most people have not been aware, as I was not, of the quiet research going on behind the scenes.
In a way, a good analogy with covid and the new vaccine would be the Manhattan Project. The idea of developing a nuclear weapon to be used in World War II did not arise quickly or spontaneously but as a result of both theoretical work and practical experimentation that went back to the end of the late 19th century when Becquerel discovered the existence of radioactivity. This initial discovery was then built on by the work of Rutherford and others. The idea of nuclear power did not spring fully formed from nowhere but was the result of much prior work. It took decades from radioactivity and the structure of the atom being a theoretical physics curiosity to having a practical use. Even when a practical use could be seen by theoreticians it was impossible to use nuclear power in any practical way because the technology was just not there to be able to do that.
It was somewhat of a happy accident that the tech and the theory had developed enough during the 20th century for a practical use, that of nuclear weapons, to be made real by the time the 1940’s came along and there was a need for a weapon to end the War. The 1940’s were the time when the technology had advanced enough for the theories to be tested in the real world which meant that the amount of time between the first Nuclear Pile at Chicago to the Trinity atom bomb test was relatively short.
The development of molecular biology over decades is very similar to the development of nuclear energy. Lots of prior study in molecular biology has brought us to the situation we are now. It could be said that it is a happy accident that the biotech has developed to such an extent that mRNA vaccines can be now realised. The biological theoreticians may have foreseen mRNA vaccines as a possibility but it is only now with current technology that theories can be put into practise.
I’m far less concerned about mRNA vaccines than I once was now that I’ve done some research into the history of them. Yes of course there are safety concerns just as there are over any new medical treatment, radiotherapy for example was far more dangerous than it is today now that this treatment is more targetable but medicine moves on, treatments and vaccines get more effective and more safe as time goes by. Now that we have this technology of mRNA vaccination it opens up a world of possibilities in preventing not just covid but a whole host of other diseases such as the various haemorrhagic fevers and maybe even Malaria.
I’m not a doctor, I can’t tell you to have or not have any mRNA covid vaccination. That is a matter for the individual and their medical advisors. But what I will say is this: Be very wary of those who are exploiting the current crisis to push their anti-vaccination hobby horse. Anti-vaxxers have seized on the news of the new covid vaccines in order to try to persuade the unwary that they will be harmed by not just the covid vaccine but by any vaccine.
The anti-vaxxers are today not just pushing their usual fact free crap about how vaccines cause Autism, an idea conjured up by a British charlatan and long since debunked, but also outlandish claims that the covid vaccine will change people’s DNA or turn them into robots serving Bill Gates or that the vaccines contain ‘nanotrackers’ etc etc. Make your own decision based on science and research and not the rantings of quacks who know as much about medicine as I know about spacecraft design and construction – which is not much. I am alive and my child is alive because of vaccination. Without vaccination I might have died from diphtheria or polio or even TB and those dangers would threaten my child as well. Vaccinations save lives, they allow more children to survive childhood and more adults to lead productive lives. The rantings of the anti-vaxxers are a dead end, literally. Make your own decision based on solid knowledge and not on the various Wormtongues that are out there.
Post Script.
One of the sources that I found helpful was a short video on mRNA vaccines from the well known Quackbuster Myles Power. Please give this video a watch and a chance.
Sorry, but I do not trust the mRNA vaccines. They have never been shown to be safe and work before this ’emergency approval’ – the world is now a drug trial and no liability to Pharma Co, but to taxpayer.
Many reports of mass deaths in old days after mRNA vaccine and sudden spike in Gibraltar is concerning
If one wants vaccine I would say Oxford AstraZenneca or maybe Sputnik vaccine
https://www.biospace.com/article/comparing-covid-19-vaccines-pfizer-biontech-moderna-astrazeneca-oxford-j-and-j-russia-s-sputnik-v/
As I said I used to hold similar views in being suspicious of mRNA vaccines, but looking back I can see that they have been far longer in development than many including myself first supposed. I’ve come across these stories of alleged deaths after mRNA vaccines but I’m suspicious of where and from what groups these reports are coming from. I’d also like to see more granular data about these deaths such as age, pre-existing conditions, lifestyles, gender and socio-economic backgrounds of those who have died.
Yes, mRNA has been in development for decades. However, none have passed safety tests until this “emergency” authorisation and they remain unlicensed. Public is being used as unwitting test participants
Long development/use doesn’t mean good – see PCR tests and 737 Max
On MMR: I believe exposing an infant with underdeveloped immune system to three pathogens at same time is inherently risky and wrong
It’s a good job that the person who made the decision to give me the Oxford vaccine was probably the right one. To them I am thankful.
I have been wary of vaccines for a little while now. I gave my son the MMR vaccine and then noticed a difference in him. After reading the article that Dr Andrew Wakefield had made a link between the MMR and the effects my son had, I assumed that was the reason he had the problems he did. I didn’t give the MMR to my daughter and she didn’t suffer the same problems as my son.
Although I am not saying it was the MMR that caused the problems that Dr Wakefield so accurately wrote about, I would certainly like to know what caused so many of the children around that time to suffer from what seemed to be the same problems.
I suppose we will never know but I am still eager to hear if anyone has any idea.
Wakefield was and still is a charlatan. His claims of a link between MMR and autism were completely disproven. What does often seem to occur is that certain genetic and cognitive conditions only really become apparent at the same or similar time to when MMR is given. It doesn’t mean that there is a link between MMR and autism it’s just that they tend to appear at the same time as the vaccinations are given.
Maybe so, yet there were so very many children suffering from the same symptoms that Wakefield implied. I saw the varying degrees at my sons nurseries and I had never encountered this level of autism/asperger’s – both mild and more serious cases – in my life.
During the period I was teaching pre-school children, there was one little girl who was obviously autistic. I worked very hard with her and got inside her head to understand her better. I was very worried about how she would make it through primary school so a person who assesses special needs for children moving into main stream school came to assess her.
She did nothing but bullshit from start to finish. She concluded there was nothing wrong with the child and said there would be no extra help.
I asked other people who worked with pre-school children and some said they had the same response.
Makes me think that there were so many children suffering at that time the authorities would just not be able to assist them all.
So you will excuse me if I think there was a bit of a cover up.
Of course you are right be suspicious of government, it’s generally a good view to take. However part of the rise in numbers of those with autism or autistic spectrum disorders is far better diagnosis. In the past a lot of these and similar conditions would be passed off as the child being ‘slow’ or having a lack of parental support, but now these conditions are much more likely to be diagnosed for what they are, at least in the West, which could account for much of the perceived ‘rise’ in these conditions. I most certainly believe that there needs to be much more research to causation when it comes to these conditions to see how much of the cause is genetic and if there are also environmental factors involved.
Yes. Agreed.
Didn’t know where to post this so since this post is mildly to do with covid, I will post here.
After doing a bit of research I have come to the conclusion that if Boris ends this current lockdown in a month or two then we should have a time of stabilisation for a while.
The time that is a bit concerning is November 2021.
Scorpio being the ruler of diseases may rear its ugly head at this time. (Back in the 80s Pluto was in Scorpio and we had the Aids epidemic)
Other than that we should have a few months respite for the summer.
I will keep an eye on it and report if anything untoward happens between now and then.
Re Autism, I was working with children at the time, and the condition was very well diagnosed for the first time – so much so, that it was almost trendy. To the person wondering why her son seemed “different” and her daughter didn’t, that is because her son was not her daughter, and vice versa. There is absolutely no link between vaccines and psychological problems – although there is a strong link between neurotic parents and psychological problems. The strongest link of all, however, is between lack of vaccinations, and the deaths of children, and the thought that people who themselves had the benefit of vaccines, wish to return to a time of 50% infant mortality, practically boils my piss.
As to “understanding” the new vaccines, about 99.99999% of us have no suitable qualifications or experience to do so; for me, a simple video explaining the basics, was reassurance enough. Likewise, I don’t know anything about brain surgery – so if I develop a brain tumour, I won’t put on some rubber gloves and attempt to remove it myself with tweezers and a sink-plunger: I will turn to someone with the necessary skills. I assume antivaxxers, who believe medics want to genetically modify them via vaccines, have such distrust of the profession, that they will ask their plumber to diagnose bowel cancer. Who do these people call, when their children are ill? David Icke?
You are correct with regards to autism. It more often shows up in boys rather than girls. Agree that there is zero link between vaccines and conditions like autism. This alleged link has been debunked time and time again and no researcher has been able to replicate the results claimed by the charaltan Wakefield.
On a slightly funny note: I’ve just had an anti vaxxer on Gab imply that I’m a bad parent for getting my child vaccinated. They said ‘but the side effects of vaccines don’t show up until adulthood’. I replied to him that the main
effect of vaccines is adulthood itself as my child stands a better chance of getting there by being vaccinated.
It does pay to take note of experts, especially those who have put their ideas out there for challenge as proper scientists do. For example I don’t sweep my own chimney even though I can get the kit to do so for £25. Instead I pay £50 to ensure that I’m getting someone who won’t damage the lining of the chimney, which might be the case if I did it.
I really despise Icke. He’s at the root of so many conspiraloon issues. I do believe that it was the Icke and anti vax types and their followers that prevented a sensible debate about what restrictions to have and where. I’d also say that they’ve probably made the aftermath of covid much worse as they’ve encouraged people not to vaccinate against covid and therefore helped to create a situation where distinctions might have to be made between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. If these nutters had not opened their cakeholes then more people would be happy to be vaccinated and there would be less need for draconian and discrininatory distinctions.
I now fully agree with the idea of vaccination passports. I believe that those who could safely be vaccinated – no allergies, etc – but refuse, should remain on total lock-down, in their own homes, and should also sign an agreement that they will not use the services of the NHS when they become ill – as mother of a daughter whose vital treatment has been delayed for a year, due to ICU beds being unavailable, it is vital that the cultists keep their insanity and their infections to themselves. Let them call on one of their preferred charlatans for medical assistance, or buy themselves some crystals.
With a lot of financial mopping up to do, we will also be unable to carry on helping them with benefits and rent/mortgage payments, but no doubt there will be a secure ex-army barracks or similar, where they can happily sneeze on each other.
There is actually precedent for this exclusion of unvaccinated people/carriers: Smallpox, Typhoid, TB and Scarlet Fever, etc.
Bring it on, say I, and let the rest of us get on with our lives. I’d like to tell them that their inevitable demise is an example of Darwinism, but they’ve probably never heard of Darwin.
This is where you and me will have to differ I’m afraid. I worry about the civil liberties aspects of internal vaccine passports. I’m less concerned about vaccine passports for overseas travel as they are little different from a Yellow Fever certificate that is required for some countries. However I’m morally uneasy about giving this government or any future worse government any more power over the citizen/subject than they have already.
The anti vax cultists are indeed insane but I believe that mockery of them and telling them exactly where they are wrong may be the better option than coercion. Even Barack Obama once said that the best way to counter bad speech is more speech and I believe that we need to have more people countering the anti vax cultists. One of the problems with coercion is it creates among the cultists a feeling of victimhood and that enforces the feeling among them that they are correct and can make them more extreme. It’s why I don’t beleive in laws to prohibit Holocaust Denial as I’d much rather these types were out in the open where they can be mocked and challenged rather than tucked away in dark corners where they cannot be challenged and can radicalise. I’m wary of giving government too many intrusive powers as although the government that brought them in may have had good intentions, a future possibly bad government may use these powers to their own bad ends.
I agree that there is precedent for people being confined in fever hospitals but that was in the past when there was not vaccination for TB and Typhoid and no antibiotics. However the past is a very different country and what may have been appropriate then may not be appropriate now. The case of Typhoid Mary for example still brings up thorny ethical, moral and legal issues. You are absolutely correct that there is a lot of financial mopping up to do in the West, less so in China who seem to have recovered economically more quickly than the West.
As for Darwin, if you’ve ever run into Creationists on Gab or Parler, then you would know that they’ve heard of him but they dismiss him as an ‘agent of the Devil’ LOL
Re anecdotes from childhood: my grandmother was one of 14 children, of whom only 6 survived past five years old, and my grandfather was his parent’s third child but the first to survive a year – something which could have been prevented by use of childhood vaccines.
When people see videos of African women sitting, dull-eyed, waiting for medical treatment for their children, it is not that they’ve been lobotomised – it is the facial expression of a person who is endlessly pregnant, and has so far had to bury five of their ten children.
As to the horror stories of the origins of vaccines/medical treatments, the use of science depends on the user of it.
My grandparents were members of the Salvation Army, who took into their home Jewish refugees who had escaped from occupied Europe before and during WW2. One family had had to escape one at a time. The father was a gynaecologist in Germany studying methods of treating ovarian cancer with radiation, and had been delighted when, instead of being fired from his post for being Jewish, the new Nazi regime showed a lot of interest, providing him with funding, and women who were apparently willing to be test cases.
Ovarian cancer being a disease of middle/old age, he realised after a few weeks that all the test subjects he was sent, were under 30, notably attractive – and Jewish. He found that these girls were being sent to brothels for the use of soldiers without risk of “mixed race” pregnancy.
He smuggled his son out in a packing case in the hold of a ship, his wife visited friends and managed to cross to Switzerland, he managed to trace the Sally Army’s underground movement and eventually the family were reunited in Nan and Grandad’s house.
His research may have been originally funded by Nazis – but his intentions in studying were pure, and his methods are still used, and have saved countless lives from a “silent” cancer.
What I care about when it comes to medicine isn’t the conspiracy behind it, it is proof that it works for good – and vaccines have saved literally millions of lives. They are the difference between a 1st world, and a 3rd world, country. Science can be used for good or for evil, but the Cultists believe that all science is inherently malignant simply because they mistrust what they fail to understand – and since they reject knowledge, they understand very little. In their world, to paraphrase Blackadder, it would still be “cavorting Druids, and dung for dinner.”
Vaccination has had a massive and positive influence on childhood survival. As I keep telling the anti vax cultists, I can happily let my child play around in the mud without the worry that he will get Tetanus, I don’t have to worry about him being paralysed by Polio or to have to have a tracheotomy because of Diphtheria.
Great and positive story from your childhood. My wife’s family escaped from Paris by the northern route just as the Germans were coming in from the east.
I completely agree that there is no medical conspiracy, that is a figment of the imagination of the anti vax cultists. Science and technology is neutral and can be used for either good or evil. It’s like the knee jerk reaction against GMO foods. GMO tech could be used to produce a more virulent form of TB but that is a rare and unlikely prospect at present. GMO is used instead to put vitamin A into rice. The problem is the GMO haters hate the science of GMO not the use to which it is put.
The Chinese ARE forcibly confined. Don’t believe the vids of them partying in Wuhan – they were staged to gloat over the west which the Cultists are busily helping them to destroy. My son teaches there. They are tracked via their phones and have to check in daily, they are only allowed out for vital purposes (work or food shopping) their temperatures are taken before they enter any public space, and they are made to sanitise their hands. Leaving home without a mask on, and attempting to talk to people in the street, is forbidden. If they are not where they are meant to be, or transgress the aforementioned rules, they are arrested and anally swabbed.
You say that that the confinements were pre vaccination, but that is the point I am making – the minds of the cultists are pre-vaccination. If they want to live in a pre-vaccination world, they need to accept the consequences to themselves of that choice. They cannot go on providing a reservoir for the virus to mutate, and endangering those who through no fault of their own, cannot be vaccinated. Children are also in danger from them, until vaccines are authorised for their use – children have died of Covid, and a healthy young immune system can produce cytokine storm. the Israelis have found that the new strains of Covid are more deadly to the under 45s.
We should all respect civil liberties, but civil liberties do not give someone the right to stick a fork in anyone’s head just because they think the giant purple sky hamster demands it.
If they have the right not to be vaccinated, then fair enough – it’s their body – but the majority have a right to be protected from them, to exercise the right to protect their own body from the consequences of someone else’s rights.
In a civilised world, we actually have far more duties than rights – because our duties guarantee the rights of others. It is the basis of all civilised behaviour: a rapist is not allowed to violated others on the basis that he has a right to sex, a killer does not have the right to take a life, just because he doesn’t like another individual, a thief doesn’t have the right to take what doesn’t belong to him. Those who consider that exercising their own rights over-rule the rights of others not to be raped, killed, or robbed, are removed from society for the good of the majority.
We cannot go on, all of us, paying the price for some unhinged, selfish people who think that the deaths of others, and the collapse of our economy and services, is secondary to their whim. Their whims are not a matter of opinion – their whims destroy others.
We can’t pussy-foot around now, any more than we could allow people to give vital information to good old Uncle Herman when the weapon was military, not viral. In fact, it was even an imprisonable offence to “create alarm and despondency” – because what mattered was survival. These are not normal times. If we ever want to experience normality again, then those whose actions prolong the agony are going to have to be prevented from doing so.
The Chinese ARE forcibly confined. Don’t believe the vids of them partying in Wuhan – they were staged to gloat over the west which the Cultists are busily helping them to destroy. My son teaches there. They are tracked via their phones and have to check in daily, they are only allowed out for vital purposes (work or food shopping) their temperatures are taken before they enter any public space, and they are made to sanitise their hands. Leaving home without a mask on, and attempting to talk to people in the street, is forbidden. If they are not where they are meant to be, or transgress the aforementioned rules, they are arrested and anally swabbed.
Thanks for the background information. This is somewhat confirmed by what I’m seeing on product lead times for goods from China. The lengthening delays in getting things like two way radios, which I buy and reprogramme for the UK radio Ham frequencies suggests to me that in addition to logistics issues caused by less goods carried in passenger aircraft due to less flights, that China’s restrictions are having an effect on the operation of factories and the availability of staff for those factories. It’s always going to be a problem getting accurate information out of tyrannies like China just as it was with the case of the Soviet Union. I do however agree that the anti vax cultists are behaving like modern day Walter Duranty’s and doing the Chinese tyrant’s work for them.
You say that that the confinements were pre vaccination, but that is the point I am making – the minds of the cultists are pre-vaccination. If they want to live in a pre-vaccination world, they need to accept the consequences to themselves of that choice. They cannot go on providing a reservoir for the virus to mutate, and endangering those who through no fault of their own, cannot be vaccinated. Children are also in danger from them, until vaccines are authorised for their use – children have died of Covid, and a healthy young immune system can produce cytokine storm. the Israelis have found that the new strains of Covid are more deadly to the under 45s.
I completely agree that the attitudes of those in the anti vax cult are pre vaccination. As I have observed that there is a strong crossover between those involved in anti vax and those who hold flat earth beliefs, creationism and the belief that space is fake and that NASA is a Jewish plot to hide the existence of the flat earth, which makes them pre-scientific and not just pre-vaccination. The Israelis are looking at whole population vaccination as they are concerned that children could become a well of infection.
“We should all respect civil liberties, but civil liberties do not give someone the right to stick a fork in anyone’s head just because they think the giant purple sky hamster demands it.
Agree there.
If they have the right not to be vaccinated, then fair enough – it’s their body – but the majority have a right to be protected from them, to exercise the right to protect their own body from the consequences of someone else’s rights.
In my view the better course of action rather than coercion or exclusion of those who are not vaccinated from everyday activities like shopping would be to encourage more people to get vaccinated and have a big campaign to discredit the members of the anti vax cult. I’m much more relaxed about requiring pre school vaccinations for the regular killer diseases as there is more chance that there could be a close encounter between a child in a school with measles and a child in a school with some form of immune suppression than there might be in the regular world. I’m really morally uneasy about internal vaccine passports and even if they are the answer I believe that they should be time limited.
In a civilised world, we actually have far more duties than rights – because our duties guarantee the rights of others. It is the basis of all civilised behaviour: a rapist is not allowed to violated others on the basis that he has a right to sex, a killer does not have the right to take a life, just because he doesn’t like another individual, a thief doesn’t have the right to take what doesn’t belong to him. Those who consider that exercising their own rights over-rule the rights of others not to be raped, killed, or robbed, are removed from society for the good of the majority.
Agree. It’s similar to the principle that has grown out of the American First Amendment which is that a person can say what they want no matter how offensive or wrong but they cannot credibly and immediately incite violence. For example it is perfectly permitted in the USA to say ‘I hate the Catholic church’ but not permitted to stand outside a Catholic church and say ‘burn it down’.
What worries me about all this is the Nuremberg Principles which although formulated to prevent abuses during medical experimentation can quite reasonably be extended to cover all medical treatment and that principle is that informed consent must be given. I would much prefer education as a way of dealing with the horrific results of what the anti vax cultists have done rather than coercion. Coercion could back fire badly and attract more people to the anti vax cult resulting in even more division and a parallel society.
We cannot go on, all of us, paying the price for some unhinged, selfish people who think that the deaths of others, and the collapse of our economy and services, is secondary to their whim. Their whims are not a matter of opinion – their whims destroy others.
I agree that the anti vaxxers are unhinged but surely there is less moral hazard in having these nutters subjected to ground up social pressures such as ridicule and challenge than top down government ones? With any legislation we should worry not just what a current government will do with them but also what a future government would use them for?
We can’t pussy-foot around now, any more than we could allow people to give vital information to good old Uncle Herman when the weapon was military, not viral. In fact, it was even an imprisonable offence to “create alarm and despondency” – because what mattered was survival. These are not normal times. If we ever want to experience normality again, then those whose actions prolong the agony are going to have to be prevented from doing so.
Whilst I share your views about the danger posed by the anti vax and anti science cultists, I’m opposed to the sort of censorship that could result from a policy of prohibiting ‘alarm and despondency’. It might have been acceptable when faced with the Uni-testicled Austrian but it might be less acceptable now especially as we now have ample examples of what happened in tyrannical societies like the Soviet Union that took censorship to the extreme. I can fully see and understand your logic on the idea of vaccine passes but I can also see how this could be abused, create exclusions and be detrimental. It would be preferable to have a mass mocking and debunking of the anti vax cultists in order to neutralise them.
OK, taking some of these points briefly…
Chinese confinement – when the “threat” was of a Q-Tip u p the nose, they thought it was worth the hassle for a night out.. Anal swabbing? A different level. Imagine my son’s cold terror when his VPN showed him to have been in Kansas. Imagine his relief when he could prove he had been taking a class. (not in Kansas any more!)
Result? No mass exodus for New Year – which last year triggered the catastrophe we are facing now.
Censorship: I do not believe ANYONE should be censored for saying ANYTHING (except credible threats of violence, of course.) Far better to allow all of us to openly debate/make idiots of ourselves. This is how free speech is actually, healthily self-monitoring: when people say things which disgust a majority, the majority refuse to listen or (verbally) shoot down the speaker, who then has to slink off and shout at their cat.
Civil Liberties: in my opinion, you can equate Covid Spreading, to smoking. I would fight tooth and nail to prevent anyone from banning smoking, because what a person spends their money on doing to their own body, is their right. But I also supported the total ban on public smoking, long before having to nurse my mother as she died of lung cancer (a non-smoker who had spent her working life in offices full of smokers.) What people breathe out, is breathed in by others – so the smoker/Covid Spreader, is not exercising their “right” – they are imposing their will on others, in denial of the rights of others. The difference between smokers and Covid Spreaders is that when smokers use the services of the NHS, they don’t make fellow patients and medical staff suddenly develop a yearning to light up, whereas Covid Spreaders close down hospitals.
Last year, i was my daughter’s “responsible adult” as she was in hospital awaiting surgery. It was cancelled due to Covid having been found in the ward, and the entire hospital was cleared and closed down. Five days later, we both developed symptoms: her case was mild and mine was not. I have never been so ill in my life, and symptoms lasted around 5 months – which is now shown to be the length of natural immunity.
Covid Spreaders/anti-vaxxers should not be allowed to infect medical centres and staff. They should find this no hardship. After all, according to them, it’s only a cold, innit?
How might a government mis-use emergency powers? Well, how many people were arrested in 1946, for “spreading alarm and despondency”? NONE. Likewise, TB sufferers are no longer confined to sanitoriums as my aunt was, for five years, between the ages 17 – 22, kids with Scarlet Fever are not sent to isolation in Fever Hospitals, and parents are no longer prosecuted for not having their child vaccinated against Smallpox. Scarlet Fever was deadly in an age where births took place at home, because it is caused by the same bacteria which cause puerperal fever; now it requires a five-day course of Amoxil. TB is incredibly rare, and treatable, and Smallpox is eradicated (thanks to vaccination.) Laws in a democracy are enforced as required, abandoned when not, by public consensus. We can’t live in fear of imaginary despotism, when we face a real threat of the death of innocents, and the collapse of services and economy.
The Israeli issue: I agree with finding a suitable vaccine for children. The problem with allowing there to be a reservoir of infection (and anyone who has worked with kids knows they are tiny Typhoid Maries) is that if allowed to survive, the virus mutates rapidly. This is what happened with Smallpox and Plague. In contrast to the Chinese, who have a vested interest in being wasteful of the lives of their over-50s population, and are therefore selling their vaccines rather than administering them, we would do well to follow the Israeli lead, as they are more protective of their people than most other nations (rarity value.)
My own children are grown up of course, but even as a mother who once told her kids they would only be allowed to cross the road alone when they were 37, I am delighted that my daughter who has suffered for a year waiting for surgery, has been offered the vaccination, and my other daughter, who she lives with, is beating on her GPs door to get it. If they were still under my control, and a child-approved vaccine existed, I would be demanding it for them.
Some good points there. Curtailment of Chinese New Year celebrations has also curtailed infections. I ws not in favour of the absolute smoking ban as I would have preferred there to be smoking rooms in pubs although I can see your argument about smoking in offices. Re Free Speech, you’ve made me feel a little sorry for cats owned by anti vaxxers. Both my wife and I have had Covid and I can tell you that it is many times worse than the flu. I had breathing difficulties and my wife was put on a steroid inhaler. Re hospitals, covid has shown up serious infection control problems in NHS hospitals something that will have to be addressed in the future not just because of MRSA and C Diff and stuff but also for any future and likely pandemic.
Agree a vaccine for children needs to be found in order to stop children being a well of potential mutations. We’ve noticed that our son is getting less colds since the schools have been off than before. The Chinese are just letting over fifties die en masse because they can afford to do so. Less over fifties for them means less people having to be supported from each wage earner’s salary. The Israelis seem to have the right ideas re covid and decades of facing military threat and centuries of Jews facing pogroms and other horrors has made them more protective of their citizens.
I know what you mean about being protective about children. We have a climber who is also an escaper and although we’ve beaten the escape habit by continual reinforcement of the ‘dont run off’ talk and having double locks on everything and all keys kept in a combination locked key cabinet, we still have issues with climbing. I’ve also equipped my child with a 446MHz two way radio and taught him that when Daddy gives him an instruction over the radio Daddy really means it LOL
I’m getting an awful lot of crap from anti vaxxers on both Gab and Parler but the way I see it if I’m getting flak from these lunatics then I must be doing something correctly.
I do believe that there needs to be an inquiry into how the government has handled the pandemic and also how it has used public messaging. I’m seeing qualified and respected medical doctors saying that messages have been confused at times and did not concentrate enough on the sort of harm reduction policies that did a great deal to slow the spread of AIDS.
You have a son. Nuff said. My daughters were not “runners” and didn’t see every NO as a challenge – my son saw every danger as a green light. Testosterone has a lot to answer for. Boys climb, skedaddle, try to ride bikes without touching the handle-bars, think vicious dogs can be tamed with Smarties, wonder what happens when they do swan-dives off tables, and, in the case of my son aged 3,, like to explore the noise their head makes when connecting with a radiator at a run. If you can keep them from their worst excesses, they grow up to be wonderful young men. Meanwhile, they are the joy and terror of a parent’s days and nights.
If you can find old episodes of the series “999” why not settle down to watch them as a family, once a week or so? I found that true-life explorations of how every-day disasters happen, worked wonders with my boy. While the girls and I did each other’s hair, he just drank in all that disaster and became an expert on how to avoid it. The voices of parents very soon become white noise but hey, the people on the telly can’t be wrong, can they? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZcFb3hMWT0
Despite what some say there is a difference in danger perception between boys and girls. What we are trying to do is, as you say, keep him from the worst excesses but still allow him freedom to play and explore. I look back in horror at some of the things that I did as a kid such as climb gasometers and although I would never allow Laughing Boy to do the same thing we are trying to find a balance between the extreme libetarianism of my childhood and helicopter parenting. The 999 series looks like good advice.
To add: Apart from the now sorted escaping problem and the climbing issue we are absolutely chuffed at how he has turned out. He’s got a brilliant vocabulary is very creative and very social. Someone once asked me what was like to become a parent, especially a mid life one and I said ‘It’s like being repeatedly hit round the face with a whole frozen salmon’ and we would not have it any other way. We’ve come to understand that ‘quiet’ means possible mischief and repeating the line from a story about a child with a hurty foot doesn’t mean that he’s really hurt his foot. Kids can be scary at times, they are like regular humans but with no filters and no common sense.
Boys are not girls, and vice versa. Simple as that. I know it sounds eccentric, but letting them see what can actually happen, without having to say a word, really works. Good luck.
PS – when mine was behaving like a cross between a chimp and Scott of the Antarctic, I found it quite comforting to see that the boy next door wore a wig and his mum’s shoes and bra and held fashion shows. It reminded me of the alternative to masculinity, and made me even more grateful for Bruiser..
PPS. Silence never bodes any good.
My boy has both traits, bruiser and showman. Funny story about him. Because I’m into amateur radio and CB there’s always been a CB rig left permanently tuned to the calling channel in our kitchen. One day I was driving in town for some reason and suddenly the radio crackled into life and it was LB saying ‘Daddy on the radio please’. He was three at the time. I was chuffed that he was able to suss out a push to talk switch at such a young age. It could have been worse though. I heard a story about a radio ham once with a full 400w all frequencies licence who also had a toddler. He made the mistake of leaving his radio on and tuned to the 80 metre band whilst doing something else. The result was that toddler picked up microphone and babbled for at least a minute with the radio kicking out about 100watts at the time. During that time the toddler blocked that particular frequency for much of the UK and Northern France and the Netherlands. Fortunately LB is only legally limited to 0.5 watts LOL.
If he can broadcast, be very careful what personal information you share in his hearing.,,,
LOL yes. We also have to keep him away from the wireless microphone for the entry phone for obvious reasons such as we don’t want him shouting ‘hello’ to random people in the street. When it comes to information he’s like a little sponge. He’s brilliant at picking up on intonation. During the 2016 election in the USA he was about 20 months and I hd had live feed of the election going a lot so LB saw a lot of podium speeches. I gave him a bit of cheese on toast for his lunch and he stood up and started babbling and waving his piece of toast around but he was babbling with the same intonation and word stresses as a politician giving a speech. He absolutely hated Ed Milliband’s voice. Every time Milliband came on the TV or radio he screamed and cried.
It’s normal to scream and cry when Ed Milliband speaks. When my son started school I was taking a degree through OU, and naturally used to talk to fellow students on the phone, in front of the children, about the courses I was doing – which included an entire segment on Nietzsche. Unfortunately, he often got the wrong end of the stick, through only hearing my half of the conversation. You don’t know what it is to be unpopular until your 5 year old kid announces to his class, in a church school “God is dead.”
The thing is he never cried at any other politician,only Milliband – Maybe he had early political good taste. Good story. Yes children can be extremely embarrassing at times. Because of my wife’s family history and my interest in old British WWII movies we talk a lot about that time in history including about the tragedies of that time, but because LB is a little sponge we have to make sure that we tell him that ‘the Germans today are not like the bad Germans of yesterday’ lest we end up with an embarrassing Fawlty Towers situation at school where he ‘mentions the war’.
Good idea. Tell him that these days, their worst offence is their very special ledged toilet design, which wipes all thoughts of master-racery from their minds.
LOL Nice one. I am aware of those toilets. I understand that it is a German cultural thing related to their traditional diet and a fear of tapeworm.
I used to work with German tourists, who got quite anxious about our lack of shelving, because they couldn’t examine their poo. One woman told me “you should have them here!” I told her that when we’d eaten something, we preferred not to see it again. Brief pause. “Ah! English humour!”
That’s a really good way of dealing with a tricky situation with humour.