COVID vaccine mandates

Vaccine mandates: evidence-based arguments against them is multiplying

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Winston Churchill once said to a woman berating him for changing his position, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, madam?” The introduction to this article by Daily Friend columnist Ian Macleod resonates beautifully with Churchill’s quote. And rightly so. Macleod’s reference to negative vaccine protection, discussed in detail by Dr Herman Edeling and Dr David Wiseman in recent interviews with BizNews, is especially shocking. The safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccine mandates aside, there are numerous, irrefutably robust arguments that vaccine mandates have no place in South African society. – Nadya Swart

Vax mandates: three more reasons to keep fighting

By Ian Macleod*

I change my mind when the evidence changes. Even better, I only make up my mind when there is evidence for it.

Covid vaccine mandate enthusiasts do neither. Recent evidence adds to the broader body of evidence that the Covid vaccines (a misnomer) are of highly limited benefit and cause harm. Here are three strong, new proof points.

Damned if you do

The New England Journal of Medicine has the most damning evidence – in a study on children. Their 7 September publication shows how precipitously vaccine protection from Pfizer–BioNTech goes to zero and then turns negative. That’s right, negative – after several months, the vaccinated are more likely to get infected. The authors say: “Two doses of BNT162b2 vaccine were effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection, although the effect of the vaccine waned over time.” One man’s ‘waned’ while another’s ‘plummeted’.

In figure A (below) we see that vaccine effectiveness against infection declines rapidly against Delta and Omicron, becoming negative within as little as five months.  

Safe(ish)

Vaccines come with meaningful health risks, too. In a September study, out of the journal Vaccine, researchers found vaccines to be associated with a litany of excess risks. Their technical finding: “There was a 16 % higher risk of serious adverse events in mRNA vaccine recipients: risk difference 13.2 (95 % CI −3.2 to 29.6); risk ratio 1.16 (95 % CI 0.97 to 1.39).”

When they get to using more accessible lingo, they conclude, “the excess risk of serious adverse events found in our study points to the need for formal harm-benefit analyses, particularly those that are stratified according to risk of serious Covid-19 outcomes.”

Did we do that?

Finally, British Medical Journal Global Health takes a broader societal view. In a paper accepted in May they “outline a comprehensive set of hypotheses for why current Covid-19 vaccine policies may prove to be both counterproductive and damaging to public health”. They find evidence that restrictions have damaged “public trust, vaccine confidence, political polarisation, human rights, inequities and social wellbeing”.

And why wouldn’t they? The most prominent voices in politics and public health have not only got things wrong, they have lied. The sitting president of the United States lied. “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccines”, said Joe Biden. So did the head of America’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Anthony Fauci has made up numbers, reversed course without any change in evidence, and advocated policies without any attempt to substantiate them. Doctors have casually provided woefully flawed medical advice on social media. Politicians have deployed the state’s monopoly on violence to control anyone who dared exercise their right to bodily integrity.

“Come on, Ian,” exasperated friends occasionally plead. “Why don’t you just leave it now? The mandates are mostly gone.” I could stop. We could let it slide. But that would be to condone what I’d suggest are crimes against humanity. And it will happen again.

[Image: Miguel Á. Padriñån from Pixabay]

The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR

*Ian Macleod studied business science at the University of Cape Town, and journalism at Rhodes University. He completed his MBA at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) during 2016-2017, penning his thesis on the challenges inherent in private equity investments into family business. 

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