With some corporations – and even some governments – applying a vaccinate-or-be-fired approach, a video sent to me by Peter Hill PhD of Melkbosstrand provides some pause for thought. It features Canadian Ethics professor Julie Ponesse who was fired on Tuesday for personally applying the principles she has been teaching for 20 years. It’s short, but powerful, ending emotionally. Here’s the link: https://rumble.com/vm8glv-ethics-professor-threatened-with-dismissal-for-refusing-vaccine.html
Community member Claudia Dalebout sent this email.
Thank you for taking the initiative in contacting Gerhard Papenfus of the National Employers Association of South Africa regarding his input on Discovery Health’s decision to mandate the Covid vaccine for their employees.
I totally agree with Mr Papenfus stating that it is wrong to force people to make a decision between a job and vaccination…and as he says…we should now stand together as a country on this basic principle.
I believe it is a God-given right for a person to be able to choose what goes into his body.
I am also wondering if there are other bodies in our country who could also offer their insights…i.e. an organisation that protects Human Rights?
Dr Liz Hart, who has steered us in the right direction on a number of occasions, sent this email in response to my daily Rational Perspective newsletter for BizNews Premium members. The points she makes are relevant for all. She wrote:
As usual, I read all that you share about COVID and vaccinations with interest. Yesterday’s letter with the study from Israel was very interesting. But it’s dangerous to use this study to generalise about immunity, as the Science article expresses. The numbers we are comparing here are tiny ‘the numbers for infections and other events analysed for the comparisons were “small.” For instance, the higher hospitalisation rate in the 32,000-person analysis was based on just eight hospitalisations in a vaccinated group and one in a previously infected group. And the 13-fold increased risk of infection in the same analysis was based on just 238 infections in the vaccinated population, less than 1.5% of the more than 16,000 people, versus 19 reinfections among a similar number of people who once had SARS-CoV-2.’
In the world of science and epidemiology this is not really adequate to make conclusive decisions.
I am much more inclined to take Emile Stipp’s view from last week’s interview which shows what the graph you published proves – 80% vaccination rate (how many people is that? Maybe 40 million?) provides real protection against hospitalisation and death. Those are much more predictable numbers. And as the article also stresses, thinking you can fight this COVID virus off with your immune system and then be protected for life is a dangerous way to think. More than half of people who get COVID have ‘long COVID’, including my healthy 18 year old son who has struggled for eight months now. That’s a lot of people and a huge burden on health systems, loss of work hours, etc.
I myself never take the influenza vaccine. I get the flu once in five years, fight it off with my own immunity and recover completely. COVID is not the same at all and it’s important for people to understand that.
Closing out today’s community contributions is an unusual idea and an interview suggestion from Tess Fairweather, a tax practitioner from Cape Town. Her email reads:
I know that you read your emails, so here is my suggestion for content that could make a good difference.
Spoilt Papers Matter.
For reasonably self-evident reasons, very few voters are aware of the value of a spoilt ballot paper.
The time is ripe to educate South African voters, especially the younger generations of all economic circumstances.
A spoilt vote says to the candidates and all the parties “I came to the voting station today to say that none of you have my support. I care. I want a say in the future of my country. But none of you are good enough to speak for me and to safeguard my future and that of my children.”
Personally, I found it quite cathartic on the few occasions when I elected to give both the rulers and their ineffectual opposition a piece of my mind.
I appeal to you to find the right personalities to interview, those that will throw rocks into the right demographic ponds and catch the attention of the restless young discontents.
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