WHENEVER society is able to reflect truthfully on the Covid-19 debacle, the mass dismissal of care workers should be a prominent part of a story of government abuse of power.
Remember the date: November 11, 2021. Remember the minister responsible: Health Secretary Sajid Javid. And let the 40,000 victims of the vaccine mandate not be forgotten. Ultimately the NHS was spared, but there was no rescue for sacked care home workers.
As a representative of the Workers of England Union, I participated in hundreds of hearings, trying to save jobs. Guiding my intervention was my earlier experience of 11 years on an NHS research ethics committee, where a central tenet was that ethical considerations trump scientific endeavour.
Science shows what can be done, not what should be done. Taking an extreme example, in China vital organs such as the heart are transplanted from a condemned prisoner while still alive, to boost the likelihood of success. This is the horrifying application of science minus humanity.
A related principle is that no medical intervention is ethical if it is not scientific. And this was my stance on the vaccines. According to the Government, vaccination was justified. But on the standard criteria of effectiveness, safety and necessity, only the last of these was fulfilled (because it was required by law, not because the virus was particularly lethal). The mandate, however, excused managers from any scientific or moral debate: They were compelled to discriminate.
The Workers of England encouraged members to claim exemption for health reasons, as this was the only way of avoiding the injections. The Government, wise to our strategy, introduced a deliberately stringent process that would limit exemption to terminal care, severe learning disability, an anaphylactic shock after a previous vaccine, and temporarily for pregnancy.
Some members were unwilling to submit an exemption because they strongly believed that ‘no jab, no job’, was fundamentally wrong, and they wanted to challenge it on that basis alone.
Steve Walker was one of them. Looking after young adults with learning difficulties and complex needs at William Blake House in Northamptonshire, Steve was dismissed with notice and barred from the premises on November 10, 2021. He perceived that the managers did not fully agree with the mandate, and his opprobrium has always been for the Government rather than his employer.
In February, Steve’s hopes were raised for a resolution to the unjust treatment of care home staff, when a successful campaign by NHS workers led to Sajid Javid announcing in parliament that the mandate would be revoked.
Steve waited for an official announcement by the Department of Health that dismissed workers should be allowed to return, ideally with full back pay. He waited in vain. Sadly, few care home employers have reached out to their vaccination rejects: Perhaps they fear the same protracted termination process when Covid or another microbial menace arises.
As I suggested, Steve wrote to his MP. His request for a remedy including compensation for lost earnings was passed to Javid. Belatedly, a dismissive reply was received via the Daventry MP Chris Heaton-Harris. You can read the letter here.
Stating that care homes were simply following the law at the time, Javid went on to explain why it was appropriate for Steve and thousands of others to be fired in November, but not three months later.
According to Javid, it’s all about variants of concern. When the law came into force, 99 per cent of cases were Delta, and vaccine effectiveness against this variant was 65 to 80 per cent. By winter 2022, Omicron accounted for 96 per cent of incidence, and the effectiveness of the vaccine was … sorry, he omitted mention of that.
Javid failed to acknowledge the futility of his mandate, in that the injections prevented neither infection nor transmission of the virus, while care homes were struggling with staff sickness after receiving the supposed inoculation. Furthermore, the testing regime in care homes (or anywhere in the community) did not identify any particular variant.
Javid presented some propaganda on the ‘continued success of the vaccination programme’. But, as with tractor production figures in the Soviet Union, enthusiastically reported in Pravda, quantity is no measure of quality. The vaccines, like the poorly-built tractors that broke down on the muddy steppe, do not work.
The minister concluded by refusing Steve’s financial demand. The Government owes not a penny to those it callously stripped of their vocation and livelihood. Passing the letter to me, Steve reflected: ‘I worked closely with a lad, on a one-to-one every shift. Progress was being made. I had a wonderful relationship with him, and with his parents. All the hard work was undone for a vulnerable person who’s been caught up in all this mayhem.’
Is it too much to ask the Government for lost earnings? Look at the billions thrown at testing, track-and-trace and digital passports, and vaccines. And now the eye-watering cost of weaponry sent to Ukraine.
French presidential candidate Marine le Pen declared that she would reinstate all 15,000 unjabbed care workers with full compensation, but we lack any mainstream politician of such ilk in the UK.
The problem is that people such as Steve get no sympathy from the regime because they, like the dissidents in communist regimes, are the worst enemy of all – critical thinkers. In other words, decent citizens who know the difference between right and wrong.
