Last Throes of a Pandemic?

This is conjecture and an exploration, not even opinion yet. Like many of us, I have so many questions but there do not seem to be many people able or available to answer.

How can such a massive campaign be launched to vaccinate people against COVID-19 without information, which allows each person to do what is best for them?

Instead, everyone now seems to think they are a doctor or an expert, qualified to tell others what to do. We have already seen this with food, which has become a fierce battleground between strongly held beliefs about what is healthy or not. Yet, Tim Spector’s team at Zoë Global have proven that even identical twins respond to food differently from each other. There is no one-size-fits-all diet, which suggests a blanket approach to taking medicine will ultimately be equally unsuccessful.

It is right to ask how the best way would be to roll out a global vaccine plan? From my perspective, people have been judged, labelled and silenced for their views. A peer reviewed article, which called for a policy rethink was retracted and its authors jeered at in the press. A discussion could have achieved an outcome for any inaccuracies instead of bringing down a hammer. This shows more absence of communication.

Now a new variant of COVID-19 has emerged, which early reports show is milder than previous ones and could even evade vaccines.

After the first doses of a two dose vaccine were distributed in early 2021, new cases dropped quickly. Whereas last year, when this coronavirus was still new to many people, during the summer months in Cornwall, there were few cases or deaths, before the vaccine was in use. In September, students went back to education and the government closed pubs and restaurants at 10pm. This is surely guaranteed to increase the spread of the virus and certainly not prevent it?

Messaging has been vague. People wear face masks outside in fresh air, while they socialise indoors without any windows open and not wearing facemasks. From July 2021, people who had received a full course of vaccination could sing, dance, hug and attend events including live sport or gathering to watch matches in crowded pubs. It is now known that covid infection is not prevented by vaccination, just potentially milder in most people. However, vaccine protection alone wanes over a diminishing number of weeks each time, so even those with two boosters will not be protected by the winter of 2022 if a more virulent variant emerges.

In the UK, people were encouraged to take a full course of the vaccine, not just one dose, whether they had previous recovered from COVID. Despite applause for the protection from one dose of the vaccine for 12 weeks in the UK, a second dose was prescribed for everyone. For many circumstances, two doses might be best. However, it does seem as if any studies were made into the immune response from exposure from the virus in the 2-12 week period after the first dose. Therefore, all information is generic and geared towards getting everyone to be ‘fully vaccinated’.

Surely, infection before the vaccine or exposure afterwards, while protection is at its peak will illicit a response from the immune system to recognise COVID-19 to prevent further infection? People who have been exposed to the virus and not become infected are worth documenting?

We are told that the first dose provides the immune system with a dossier to fight covid. This seemed to be going well, from the sharp drop in deaths and rapidly falling cases. This was during lockdown, which meant that people could avoid exposure to the virus for two weeks after the dose.

When restrictions were lifted in July, travel was allowed for people who had either had two doses of the vaccine or taken expensive tests and quarantined. Other countries were not as confident about letting people in from the UK and rules became very complicated. As people without vaccines were either tested and quarantined, it seems unlikely they could spread the virus abroad without detection.

At one point, antibody tests were talked about, but these are not used to prioritise vaccines for those who are not protected. Meanwhile, the UK was hoarding millions of doses of vaccines, while many countries had access to none at all.

All the actions by the UK government, closing pubs last September at 10pm, keeping schools open in January 2021 and March 2020, letting unvaccinated people travel without tests or isolation, not testing for asymptomatic cases and making tests complicated to access. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson uses millions of pounds to send a letter to every single household in the UK to tell people what they already know and Public Health England becomes the main advertiser in all the local press to drive home government’s vague messages.

Have we documented what happens to people who have been exposed to the virus within 3 months of their first vaccine dose?

It seems very apparent, from the history of viruses and what is known about previous pandemics, that people who live in busy city centres will become more immune to those living in unexposed, spread out country areas. We ought to remember the first European settlers in America, who infected native populations with their diseases. Humans carry viruses. Tests on people in New York, Paris and other places have shown that a significant amount are carrying various viruses, which are not making them ill.

If we respond to various foods according to our genes, climate and lifestyle, then medication could have a bigger impact. Vaccines are an amazing invention as the support the immune system in fighting off a virus or bacteria. Vaccines have eradicated small pox and polio as well as contained many other potentially dangerous or disfiguring diseases. Alternatively, Africans were enslaved to work in the New World, because they had more resistance to malaria than pale skinned Europeans.

During the Spanish flu, preventative measures were used to contain the spread of the virus, which included supporting infected individuals so they were not forced to work to survive. Opening times in New York were staggered, to ease congestion on public transport.

With COVID-19, we have taken fast transport, communication and information technology as well as past lessons for granted. UK government actions have been inconsistent with putting people’s lives and health first and yet thisis the promise for getting everyone vaccinated.

Today, unlike during the Great Plague in 1665, when Eyam in Derbyshire elected to quarantine its residents to prevent the contagion reaching new rural areas, we have means of communication without being in the same room. We also have means of accessing and sharing information.

Had regular updates of information been shared with the media to allow open discussions to find the best answers from the start of 2020, so many lives would have been saved. So many people simply don’t know if they have had the virus, if they have any immunity or even how to get a free test to find out. If they do think they are infected, how can they guarantee they will they keep their job, can they pay their bills and get food if they need to stay at home for two weeks? If you start symptoms, should you call your owrk and all your contacts, shops you have been to, to suggest they get tested?

These questions are extra challenging if you are on your own. These things have never been clarified.

Corporate hype has been used to coerce people to get vaccines, instead of providing the press with all the information to answer questions and hold open discussions about the best way to use the vaccines to stop transmission of the virus, save lives, prevent hospitalisations and end the pandemic.

This was totally possible but governments did not regulate the propaganda and hype from pharmaceutical marketing departments. Labels “anti”, “activist”, “terrorist” and “far right” have been used to suppress any views, which contradict the official narrative.