PANDEMIC policy is slowly changing in response to health data. Is it changing fast enough and is it changing in the right direction?
From the beginning, there were concerns about the long-term outcomes following both Covid infection and vaccination. At this point these are becoming more clearly appreciated.
Neither the dire predictions of widespread Covid severity nor the protection of Covid vaccination have come to pass as initially promised.
Health authorities remain heavily committed to a Covid strategy which relies upon mRNA vaccination. Is it working?
All-cause mortality has reached record levels. Our health system is reportedly overwhelmed. The mRNA vaccination does not prevent Covid infection. Why?
The reasons for these effects are technical, but were not unexpected. There has always been a fear that mRNA vaccination might depress immune function.
Vaccine-induced antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) occurs when our immune antibodies generated as a result of vaccination combine with a pathogen to facilitate its entry into cells and thereby enhance infection. In one sense we could say this occurs because our immune system becomes so familiar with a pathogen that it learns to accept it. The result can be repeated infections.
A ground-breaking paper from Japan published on September 16 titled ‘Re-evaluation of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection in anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic antibodies and mRNA-vaccine antisera using FcR- and ACE2-positive cells’ explores this possibility and concludes that both therapeutic antibody Covid treatments and mRNA vaccination can result in ADE.
Does this mean that mRNA Covid vaccination programmes should be halted? At this point, policy makers are beginning to entertain divergent opinions. Denmark has halted Covid vaccination for the under-50s. The UK has halted vaccination for the under-12s.
Amid growing concerns, the most worrying trend is for authorities and employers to double down on vaccine requirements or dismiss questioning voices out of hand in a manner that is detached from the evolving scientific findings. Incredibly, the Netherlands is discussing the reintroduction of vaccine passes.
It is important to understand that vaccination in general is the mainstay of medical policy everywhere. From the outset, policy makers accepted that mRNA vaccination would be effective and safe. Now significant doubts have arisen, but like a poker player who has gone all in on a bet, changing strategies does not look possible to many in the medical profession. They are hoping that more of the same – more boosters – will pull everyone through.
Conversely a number of formerly strong vaccine advocates are expressing doubts and wavering. Dr Paul Offit, a paediatrician specialising in infectious diseases and a world expert on vaccines, immunology and virology, who is a contributing editor of the authoritative New England Journal of Medicine, does not himself intend to get Omicron-specific boosters and doesn’t advise it for others. He says the research is insufficient. He also worries that mRNA vaccination has been inappropriately offered to young people.
Offit is by no means the only one speaking up. Discussions about mRNA vaccine safety are being widely aired. See this article in SSRN, ‘COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk-Benefit Assessment and Five Ethical Arguments against Mandates at Universities’.
There is still a lot that we don’t know. I have written extensively about this over the last few weeks at the Hatchard Report.com and referenced the issue to recent journal publications.
With all-cause mortality rising, the real concern here is that governments have been very cagey about releasing data on cause of death paired with vaccination status – a prerequisite for definitive research. Where data is available, such as from Britain’s ONS, it strongly points to a concerning relationship between all-cause death and Covid vaccination. The MSM is reluctant to cover these issues, especially ADE.
New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern has flown to New York in a private jet with Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau for a week of intense diplomacy with world leaders. Her focus is expected to be on controlling mis- and disinformation, and online extremism.
Just remember that last September NZ health officials and advisers dismissed as disinformation claims by GP Dr Peter Canaday that mRNA vaccination can result in ADE. It never was disinformation; Canaday was simply seeking to initiate a scientific discussion based on published research and theoretical inference. Now ADE is a scientifically recognised result of mRNA vaccination, so he was right to probe the issues.
This wasn’t Dr Canaday’s only claim. He also suggested mRNA vaccines are not very effective at preventing transmission – a claim which was also dismissed as disinformation at the time and we now know to be true.
My suggestion is that we are being left partially in the dark. This is partly because mRNA vaccination safety has become a hot potato that no one wants to hold and partly the result of vaccine extremism. Public safety should have been paramount. New research is raising concerning issues.
We are talking human health here, not political allegiance. This is fundamentally a scientific matter. Therefore you might consider joining those who are asking hard questions and expecting answers. Otherwise research findings could be swept under the carpet and deliberately withheld from the public.
