I’m all for freedom of speech. In fact its one of the few parts of life, culture and politics that I would consider myself absolutist about. I believe that bad ideas should be aired, not because I want bad ideas to succeed, but so that these bad ideas can be challenged by those with better ideas. Allowing those with truly bad ideas to speak, whether those bad ideas are religious, political or scientific, puts them in a position where they can be debated, hopefully in a civil manner and ultimately defeated. The only caveat on freedom of speech should be where the speaker is inciting a credible and immediate act of violence against persons or property. For example: Calling for a riot using what has been termed ‘fighting words’ is not free speech and neither is standing outside a particular religious, cultural or political building, pointing at it and saying ‘burn it down’. Reasonable people would I believe be able to see the difference between words and actions. It’s one thing for instance to express hatred for the more ‘out there’ expressions of art but quite another to go and attack the gallery that is showing such art. The first is morally acceptable, the other is not.
I want freedom of speech for all, even for my enemies, those who have descended into madness and tin foil hattery and those who say things that I find grossly offensive. I even want freedom of speech for those who are patently wrong, such as anti vaccination activists, because the evidence is plainly not on their side and most people, in the United Kingdom at least, can see through them and reject their arguments. Allowing such deluded individuals to speak gives those who are more scientifically literate along with those who are able to discern scientific falsehood from scientific truth an opportunity to show the deluded up as the ignoramuses that they are. Providing better information than the deluded ones do, convinces others that the deluded are wrong and wins the argument on evidence, which is how things should be.
Those with out there views should also be able to peacefully demonstrate in order to voice their opinions not I feel I should say because I agree with them but because the right to peacefully assemble and voice a viewpoint should be a right for everyone. Equally there should be permitted, unless it is liable to cause a credible and immediate public disorder situation, the right to counter demonstrate against the primary demonstration.
Now I’ve set out my stall regarding my views on the right to freedom of speech and the freedom to peacefully assemble and demonstrate, it’s time to get to the meat and potatoes of this piece, which is a demonstration that clearly failed as an example of peaceful assembly. When a demonstration stops people from peacefully and lawfully going about their daily business, intimidates people with the fear or threat of violence, damages property and forcibly shuts down through threat or action a business or a public service, then it’s no longer, at least as I consider it, peaceful.
This failure to peacefully assemble is what happened over the weekend when disgraced former nurse Kate Shemirani brought her anti vaccination activists to Brighton. They gathered outside a covid vaccination centre in Churchill Square, blocked the doors of the centre, let off a smoke flare inside a nearby shopping centre, caused the vaccination centre to be closed and worst of all in my view, intimidated those who wanted to be vaccinated into going away as can be seen from the Tweet featured below.
I think I’d be bloody furious as well if this happened to me or someone I love who was prevented from being vaccinated. Shemirani and her loons had an absolute right to protest but not to prevent someone being vaccinated against a life threatening illness.
Thankfully, as you will see from this particular Tweet thread, this idiotic struck off nurse and her scientifically illiterate followers do not appear to have wide support, in fact there’s a fair few commentators who want Shemirani locked up. Personally I don’t want Shemirani locked up, that just gives the anti vax loonspuds a martyr to gather around, instead I want her mocked and discredited by more sensible voices, something that is already happening.
What we see here, in the conduct of Shemirani and her followers is utterly disgraceful and wrong. It also shows a very twisted view of personal choice. It appears that Shemirani and her crew of anti vaccination morons believe that they have the right to refuse vaccinations but those who choose to be vaccinated do not have that right. This is what they showed when they blocked the vaccination centre doors, intimidated staff and those wishing to be vaccinated and generally causing mayhem. The behaviour of Shemirani’s lot does not demonstrate that they are in favour of freedom of choice but instead they show that they are quite favourable to using coercion to enforce their particular choice on others. It looks very much like the Shemirani gang take the view that there should be ‘free choice for me but not for thee’.
In Britain, with very few exceptions where there are particular risk factors, vaccination is not mandatory or compulsory, it is of course strongly encouraged, which I believe is correct, but on the whole people can choose to be vaccinated or not. However they run the risks of refusing a covid vaccine or a Whooping Cough, Rubella or Hepatitis B vaccine if someone works in healthcare or teaching where it is recommended that they get one.
What Shemirani and her crew of science ignorant nutters have done is remove the right of others to make their personal choice to be vaccinated against Covid by preventing those who’ve made that choice from getting to the vaccination centre. What Shemirani and her lot did is a prime illustration of someone having the absolute right to wave their arms around with their hands balled into fists, but who oversteps that right by having a fist contact with someone else’s nose. The Shemirani mob, and yes I consider it a mob, infringed on the rights of others to exercise their choice to be vaccinated. I therefore consider this particular group of anti vax attention seekers and grifters to be little different in character from the thugs that make up the Extinction Rebellion and BLM/Marxist groups and should elicit the same sense of disgust at their arrogant ideologically driven presumption to tell Britons what they should and should not do. If we are to be fair then if we are angry at the disruption and destruction caused by BLM/Marxists and Extinction Rebellion, then we should also be angry at a rights removing demonstration by ignorant foolish anti vaxxers in Brighton.
The problem as I see it is that both sides of this argument are willing to pretend that the Covid vaccine is just like any other in order to win their argument and it is not. When it comes to regular well established vaccines, there is no rational argument against them, they are demonstrably safe and effective and anyone who opposes them is an obvious nutter. The Covid vaccine is only partly effective, it only reduces symptoms and does not prevent infection or spread of the virus and has unknown risks. Young and healthy people are at minimum risk from the virus and have a genuine judgement call to make when deciding whether to take the jab. People who have doubts about the Covid jab are not anti vaxers but the anti vaxers love to claim that they are. People who are in favour of vaccines generally are labelling those who have their doubts about the Covid vaccine specifically as anti vaxers. Nobody is being honest.
I completely agree that the covid vaccine is somewhat novel although novel to the public not novel to the scientists who’ve been working on either the theory or the practise of using mMRNA for vaccines since the mid 1970’s. It was only in recent years, since the SARS COV1 outbreak in the early part of this century that the biotech improved and a method was found to stop the mRNA being destroyed by the body’s immune system, which was the major hold up in using mRNA for vaccines. The concepts and ideas behind mRNA vaccines are not as new as many people would like to believe.
Having seen as a child what must have been one of the last British infantile polio cases, had older people tell me what Diptheria was like and seen the fear on my parent’s faces when Whooping Cough was mentioned as being in the area, ‘nutters’ is the mildest word I would choose to describe those who would bring such disease back via encouraging parents not to vaccinate their children against them. It’s the people who encouraged non-vaccination such as the Wakefield, Mercola, Kennedy, Tenpenny and others who frightened people away from MMR vaccine in the USA resulting in a rise in Measles cases in a country that was once, for a while, Measles free.
It’s also true that the Covid vaccines we have at present are only partially effective. They do not seem to create long term sterilising immunity in everyone. However this also applies to Tetanus and Smallpox vaccines as well. Britain’s last Smallpox case in 1978 was the death of a medical photographer working in a lab that was one floor above a lab handling Smallpox. This lady had been vaccinated in 1966 but because of the elapsed time she was not fully protected against Smallpox and died. Immunity created or enhanced by vaccination varies according to the individual, the type of vaccine and the nature of the pathogen. It would have been nice if the Covid vaccines had given sterilising immunity to everyone but this has not been the case.
Protective immunity is a different story. This is the big win for the covid vaccines. We can see the difference they are making with protective immunity, which is stopping deaths and serious illness. by comparing the UK and the USA. In the UK things are slowly normalising and the number of deaths and hospitalisations is staying steady or going down. Cases also seem to be stablising although I predict some spikes when schools go back and when winter arrives. In the USA where anti vaccination sentiment is much stronger than in the UK less people are vaccinated and they appear to be afflicted by a lot more infections that are ending up in hospitalisations and death.
As for the risks, any medication or treatment carries risks. The big question for me is do the risks outweigh the benefits? At first I believed that the risks of vaccination trumped the benefits but as time has gone on and I’ve done more in depth reading of credible scientists and medics I have found that the evidence has changed my mind. Vaccination might carry a number of very small risks such as 1:40000 for a blood clot, but its better to risk that than many of the immediate and unknown long term problems caused by covid itself.
Younger people might be at lower risk of covid but are not at no risk. Deciding to vaccinate 12 to 18’s is a judgement call although figures from the USA that I’ve seen that show 500 under 18’s do show that low risk isn’t no risk and therefore vaccination of this group should not be off the table.
People have had doubts, I had doubts myself but I came to change my view by considering what those with extensive medical and scientific knowledge have to say and what they’ve explained to me. A lot of people have not done that. They’ve had doubts but instead of going to credible sources for information, they’ve gone to the sort of people who put out eye catching scare stories about the vaccine, people like Mercola, Wakefield etc. These big figures behind anti vaccination have spun credible looking but ultimately false stories about the vaccine’s action and effects. The anti vaxxers have in my view exploited and indeed farmed those with covid vaccine doubts for both clicks, influence and money.
You are correct in saying that everyone has been supporting their own agenda on this. However I’m finding more objective truth in the science behind the vaccines than in the politics and faith positions that the anti vaccination crowd rely upon.