Last week Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern dubbed 2021 the “year of the vaccine” and outlined parts of her government’s plans for a mass vaccination rollout across the country.
Ardern pins her hopes on a vaccine to halt our rising tide of Covid deaths (sarc) which is as believable as her stated reason for entering politics: to end child poverty, which worsened under her watch.
Is the vaccine just the latest ploy to shove us into totalitarianism when we have tired of social distancing and lockdown and pushed back against the unsubstantiated value of face masks? Polly St Thomas says, “We are all in a giant human trial to figure out how to control us… COVID-19 is a ruse to make people and governments compliant to the Sustainable Development Goals.”
Conspiracy theories aside, Israel found the Covid vaccine no silver bullet in protecting its elderly.
“Israel, which, like the UK, is currently in its third national lockdown, has so far vaccinated more than 75% of its older people with at least one dose. Early reports from the vaccine rollout have suggested that the first dose led to a 33% reduction in cases of coronavirus1 compared with efficacy of at least 52% reported in clinical trials.2
A preliminary report from the Clalit Research Institute compared the infection data of 200,000 people aged 60 and over who were not vaccinated with the infection data of 200,000 people of the same age group who received one vaccine dose and were monitored for at least 11 days from the date of vaccination. On day 14 there was a “significant decrease of about 33% in the rate of positive tests for the coronavirus” among those who had been vaccinated. This decrease remained the same between days 15 and 17.”
Times of Israel
33% is a fair distance away from the 98% antibody protection measured in younger hospital workers who developed a high level of antibodies after the second vaccine dose. Hopefully the statistical response of the elderly improves after a second dose.
We know that the average healthy person does not usually die from Covid so a hospital trial on the young and healthy gives no reassurance to the elderly and immune-compromised who are more at risk of complications from, or succumbing to, Covid. It’s early days in the development of vaccines and in truth, we still don’t know enough about them.
Britain’s deputy chief medical office Professor Jonathan Van-Tam confessed last week “we do not yet know the impact of the vaccine on transmission of the virus. So even after you have had both doses of the vaccine you may still give COVID-19 to someone else and the chains of transmission will then continue.”
Epoch Times
Van-Tam advised extending the period of time the elderly allow for their immune system to fully respond from two to three weeks after the second dose. Our immune systems weaken with age although even at a young age some immune systems can become compromised.
The US CDC admit the Covid vaccine is a new process but say it does not contain a live virus and therefore has no risk of disease or transmission. They also claim the vaccine has been rigorously tested, a statement that can be challenged given the unusually short time frame to distribution given previously developed vaccines usually take at least 10 years testing before distribution.
Like all vaccines, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have been rigorously tested for safety before being authorized for use in the United States.
mRNA technology is new, but not unknown. They have been studied for more than a decade.
mRNA vaccines do not contain a live virus and do not carry a risk of causing disease in the vaccinated person.
mRNA from the vaccine never enters the nucleus of the cell and does not affect or interact with a person’s DNA.
CDC
Last weekend I lunched with several lovely ladies nurturing overseas travel plans and pinning their hopes on the vaccine opening our borders, ending quarantine, preventing lockdown and stopping transmission of the disease to keep them safe overseas. At the risk of pouring cold water on their confidence, my approach is one of softly softly until more is known. There is no guarantee the vaccine will be effective against future developing strains of the disease making effective anti-Covid protocols essential and overseas travel risky.
Being a human guinea pig in the fast rollout of a quickly developed vaccine calls for caution, which is not what Jacinda Ardern’s government are suggesting for Maori and Pacifica prioritised to receive the vaccine ahead of everyone else when it is rolled out here. For the sake of their elderly becoming guinea pigs, I hope we have more information on vaccine outcomes before that day arrives.
Overseas experience of vaccinating the elderly demonstrates existing (non-invasive) anti-Covid protocols should be maintained.
“Norway, like other countries, has prioritized the immunization of nursing-home residents. Those who died were 75 or older and included terminally ill patients anticipated to have only weeks or months to live. An average of 400 people die each week in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, according to the Norwegian Medicines Agency.
Germany has also seen several cases of elderly people dying shortly after vaccination. The deaths were probably due to the patients’ underlying diseases, not the inoculation, according to a report by the Paul Ehrlich Institute. Finland has recommended against systematic vaccinations of terminally ill patients whose active treatment has been stopped as common side-effects such as temporary fever can weaken their condition.”
Bloomberg
The vaccinated elderly would have died anyway, but the point is, they are equally at risk of dying from Covid too. Surely it is better to maintain strict anti-Covid protocols instead of expecting a vaccine to replace them and you also have to ask why would you vaccinate the elderly before assessing the risk from vaccination compared to the risk of contracting the disease without vaccination?
More information is needed before we blithely inject the vulnerable, but I suspect it won’t come from the health experts or an overseas travel deprived public pinning their hopes on the vaccine returning us to pre-Covid days.
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