My colleague and Medika co-founder Dr Jeff Livingston published an article yesterday morning that caught my eye. It’s about the Houston-based Methodist Hospital System and you can read the full article here. Essentially, here is the gist of the piece. The hospital’s Chief Executive Officer Dr. Marc Boom informed staff that they will now be required to be vaccinated. The new mandate will require all staff to receive their first vaccine dose by the middle of April.

They are the first hospital in the US to formalize this policy in writing, an important step that will be closely watched by other institutions, as this is in direct contravention to Federal Law and CDC guidelines, that state very clearly that experimental drugs — remember that none of the vaccines have finalized trials and only enjoy Emergency Use Authorization(EUA) approval with the FDA — may not be forced upon the public.

Individual rights and freedom of choice lie at the heart of this federal legislation. There is an unknown long-term element of risk (we have no idea if there will be any long-term adverse consequences to either of the two types of vaccine) in accepting the covid vaccine and the Federal government acknowledges and accepts this. As they don’t offer any form of compensation in the event things go wrong and have in fact indemnified drug makers against any claims relating to the covid-19 vaccines, it should only be considered fair that the choice to take the vaccine, be a personal one.

EUA MEDICINES CAN NOT BE MANDATED.

But it is happening, across the US, and various mechanisms are being employed to ensure you get your covid jab. Schools and universities will be at the forefront of the coming standoff. As early as September of 2020 articles were being published by NBC News, poorly researched and based on the flawed assumption that we’d be dealing with a normal vaccine and parents would have no legal foot to stand on. The truth is a very different beast.

Companies engaged in public-facing services are insisting, albeit less formally, that staff get vaccinated. Vaccine passports are on the verge of being released on an unsuspecting public and I’ve discussed the discriminatory mechanisms of these in-depth here.

Doctors tend to use the logic applied to mandatory vaccination for influenza and apply this to the covid vaccines. This is fundamentally flawed reasoning. We are not dealing with an influenza vaccine here, that has proven itself over decades and for which well-established risk profiles exist.

What are the facts?

• The covid vaccines, short term, have proven themselves both safe and very effective. FACT. There is however concern that they may not fare so well against variants and more data are required to answer this question definitively. You can validate existing reported data on adverse reactions recorded on the VAERS system via the CDC’s Wonder interface.
• We are dealing with a novel method of administration for two of the vaccines, mRNA is new and in a normally cautious medical environment, these products would have taken another four to five years to reach the market. FACT. We’ve rushed this, out of necessity. Another mRNA vaccine targeting Zika is in clinical trials. It will be interesting to see the timeline on this vaccine for final FDA approval.
• The SARS-CoV2 virus poses minimal risk to younger, healthy individuals with no co-morbidities. In fact, many older people who are otherwise healthy, also survive the virus. It poses a marginal, quantified risk unless you are obese and/or suffer from co-morbidities, a comprehensive list of which you can find here. FACT. The virus has already claimed over half a million lives in the US alone. There is clearly a risk, but it is a qualified one that we can now begin to statistically address.
• The covid vaccines we are offered are unapproved medicines. FACT. None have as yet completed trials (Long-duration Phase 3 findings). They all enjoy Emergency Use Authorization, which is not the same as a formally approved drug that has satisfied all the testing criteria.
• There is no existing data on the long-term efficacy and possible unforeseen side effects of an mRNA vaccine. FACT. While there may in fact, and we all hope this to be the case, be no side effects, we cannot exclude the possibility of negative unforeseen outcomes. It is an unquantified risk that will only be resolved over time and new research highlights our minimal understanding of the processes we are attempting to control.

The US government recognizes these facts and has passed legislation to protect its citizens accordingly. Sensible legislation, not influenced by pandemic paranoia, but a law that places the interests of the individual at the forefront. You can access the US legislation in full here and if you’re based in the EU. here’s the EU legislation passed to protect unvaccinated individuals against discrimination.

The Federal law is emphatic. Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) medications are not compulsory and your decision not to partake in vaccination, cannot be used to discriminate against you.

Dr. Amanda Cohn, the executive secretary of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, was asked if Covid-19 vaccination can be required, Her answer was emphatic.

“ under an EUA, “vaccines are not allowed to be mandatory. So, early in this vaccination phase, individuals will have to be consented and they won’t be able to be mandatory.” Cohn later affirmed that this prohibition on requiring the vaccinesapplies to organizations, including hospitals.”

What if companies, businesses, and hospitals persist?

The solution is a simple one. Accept liability for any potential future negative impacts the vaccines may have on the recipient’s health. One would assume from his policy that individuals like Dr. Marc Boom, from Houston Methodist, is completely convinced the covid vaccines are safe and will not produce any adverse reactions in the years to come?

If not, then he is knowingly subjecting an employee to a medication he is himself unsure of. Let’s clarify this even further. If the employee is in an established risk category, the argument becomes moot, as the benefit of taking the vaccine outweighs the risk. I am certain that the majority of Dr. Boom’s workforce is in fact healthy and not classified as being in a risk group for developing Covid.

Let’s see the employers put their money where their mouth is. If you are completely convinced the recipient will suffer no future ill effects from the vaccine, put it in writing. Accept liability. Except you won’t, will you? Not even the U.S. government is willing to go down this route. It is too fraught with risk and yet Dr. Brown seeks to remove the choice from his healthy employees, to roll the dice for them. What gives him the right?

Who gives any employer the right to ask this of their employees. It is offensive and completely at odds with medicines’ prime directive. To do no harm. If you are not 100% sure of the product and the disease poses negligible risk to the patient, can you in good faith proceed? What kind of medicine do you practice and what side of the fence are you on?

Time has just published an article suggesting people who won’t accept the vaccine now will be shamed into it later. Vaccine passports and schools will add to the pressure. All wrong, all hopelessly at odds with the law, and each process these institutions engage in, further distances people from the vaccines. The anti-vaccine brigade must be holding house parties celebrating your stupidity and arrogance.

The covid vaccine is a tool of health

It is not a political weapon to be wielded for commercial purposes, for political gain and to alter the global balance of power. It is a tool to combat the pandemic and to save lives. For those at risk, for the aged, for those who are obese, suffer from other risk factors, and struggle with immune disorders, this vaccine is a life-saving tool.

Despite this, it is still an unproven medicine, one not fully tested and one that cannot be enforced on any sector of the community. Getting the vaccine is a question of choice. It must remain this way. I look forward to your considered responses.

The post Enforcing Emergency Use Vaccines on an Unwilling Public. We Must Say NO appeared first on Medika Life.

Can we afford, a year into a global pandemic, to embark on policies that threaten our social cohesion, public acceptance of Covid vaccines, and that further threaten the wellbeing of large segments of our populations? I am of course referring to enforced Covid-19 vaccinations, by whatever means. Any mechanisms that bring pressure to bear on individuals to force them to accept vaccination.

As the year of the vaccine unfolds more and more of these mechanisms are being touted by states, governments, companies, corporations, and essential service providers to ensure you are vaccinated. Whether you like it or not.

A person can easily see through the rhetoric that is publicly offered for most of the new ‘Vaccine Passport’ policies. The proponents aren’t concerned about the vaccine or your health, most are driven by an overwhelming desire to return to business and usual. They see the vaccine as the tool to ensure this in the shortest space of time, and while the general population waits interminably for vaccines to reach them, the wealthy and those in privileged positions can enjoy a life of near normalcy off the back of their newly acquired ‘Passport to Freedom’.

So you see, it isn’t really about the vaccine at all, merely a desire for profits, business, and freedom, a return to a pre-2020 world, achieved by using the vaccine as an enabling tool. The problem, as far as the vaccine itself is concerned, is that very few people will see it for this or be able to make the distinction.

Cries of enforced engineering and population control are already been bandied about on social media by anti-vaxers and extremist headcases and their ranks are swelling. Already abysmal vaccination refusal rates are about to skyrocket. All thanks to the self-inflicted damage caused by these new policies.

If for argument sake, I don’t trust the vaccine, you just made it appear even less appealing, by a factor of 50. From a personal perspective, I believe the vaccines released in the US and Europe are safe. I won’t speak for Russian (Sputnik) and Chinese (Sinovac) products as I haven’t investigated these and it wouldn’t be fair to comment on them. My gut tells me that one or two of the emerging vaccines will show side effects, not massively, but in sufficient numbers to have them withdrawn.

It’s a commonplace risk with new drugs. Teething problems not ironed out. We are still all good though, as the majority of the vaccines will prove safe and their efficacy in the field will be validated or not, in the coming months. Here is a really useful infographic from the WHO for those who want to know more about the vaccines approved or nearing approval.

The problem now is more and more people do not believe this. Enforced vaccinations and employment or services requiring proof of vaccination merely aggravate this distrust. As I said, there is a fine distinction, which few people can, or are willing, to make.

The process to enable these restrictions and policies is already in motion and I cannot see it being stopped unless global populations come out in arms. The ramifications are serious and will disproportionately impact medium and low-income groups. Severely so.

Let’s examine these impacts before they necessarily unfold in the forlorn hope the message reaches the ears of sympathetic government or regulatory officials somewhere and they take heed.

Before we start it’s important to note that the WHO has officially refused to condone the use of immunity or vaccination passports for conditional travel. They rightly point to a lack of data on viral transmission from inoculated individuals.

My interpretation of measures announced by governments, large corporate chains, and airline firms, to name but a few, in the last few days, is this.

The Billionaires Boys Club

We are allowing for the creation of wealth clubs based solely on our vaccination status. Financially blessed and influential individuals who are able to use their wealth and influence to procure vaccination for themselves and their direct associates, family, and friends. People who view the vaccination priority ranking system as an insult to their status and power and who are unfamiliar with the word queue.

Over the coming months, these individuals will create a world for themselves that is free of risk from Covid, or 95% free. They will enjoy air travel, clubs, dining, and complete freedom of movement. Their businesses will flourish as they step back and watch the rest of humanity split their time between the ever-present specter of death and squabbling desperately for scarce vaccines.

Vaccines will become the new contraband of 2021, sold in bidding wars that will play out in quiet alleyways, the dark web, and on closed Facebook groups.

It would come as no surprise if future investigations into irregularities with vaccine stock held in Washington, for distribution to healthcare and essential personnel, turn up wholesale theft or misappropriation by top officials and those involved in the supply chain. This group of wealthy individuals doesn’t like to be kept waiting.

Keep in mind, that vaccine they just stole out from under your nose was earmarked for your wife working in the ER or your grandmother. They are directly complicit in many of the deaths we will face in the coming weeks and months. Will they ever face prosecution? It’s doubtful.

The problems I have described above aren’t from some imagined scenario. These policies are already being rolled out and many countries are firmly on board. In a statement, the Philippines health secretary this week announced Vaccination Passports, barcoded, that would be issued to each citizen after vaccination.

In a country of 130 million people, they stand no chance of vaccinating the entire population before 2023. Vaccine availability and scant resources will ensure that only the wealthy and privileged are vaccinated, while those in the provinces will be left to their own devices, excluded as they will be, from services, employment, and travel based on these passports.

How this impacts you directly

The financial impact of these policies on the working class will be devastating, particularly in hard-hit countries like America.

How long do think it is going to take for an average working joe, a 25-year-old male or female, with no pre-existing health conditions, to receive the vaccine. A year? Possibly two?

While they wait, they will see their jobs lost to colleagues who have managed to scrape together enough money to ‘buy’ vaccination. They will not get to see their dying parent, ten states away, as no domestic flights will allow them to board a plane without proof of vaccination. Many will remain stranded in foreign countries, often without work, while they await vaccination.

Shops will turn them away, restaurants will refuse them access and banks and insurance companies will start calling in loans and refusing life insurance. Health premiums will soar. They may very well find their right to travel anywhere threatened as Covid figures continue to climb in the coming months. Public safety will be cited for these draconian measures.

In sheer desperation they will eventually purchase a vaccine on the black market, probably toxic or fake or both, or turn to fake vaccination documents, an industry rapidly setting up shop as I write this. They may even lose their apartment because of the risk they pose to other vaccinated tenants or be refused an apartment based on their vaccination status. It may even be state-based social welfare systems that enforce this policy.

It’s been a crazy few years and nothing is discounted in the American playbook. Nothing.

That is the bleak future that awaits normal working-class Americans if enforced vaccination and access to services and employment is made vaccine-conditional. It is a very real future currently unfolding right under our noses and not to speak up, not to highlight these dangers, is irresponsible, immoral, and short-sighted.

It isn’t about taking issue with a vaccine. It is about fundamental human rights and our desire to protect our fellow humans, not add to their burdens. Particularly those segments of our population that cannot speak up for themselves, the disadvantaged and the poor. They will be adverse3ly affected.

The issue of personal choice is also obviously an integral and important part of this discussion. By removing our freedom of choice societies set a dangerous precedent. It speaks to a breach of trust in those we have elected and the corporations we support.

Freedoms matter and you are watching yours being eroded, possibly permanently.

Do get vaccinated when the opportunity presents itself. It is sensible, it is for your health and your community’s benefit, and the fact the wealthy are lining up for the vaccine is proof it’s safe and won’t make you grow a tail. Not a long one anyway.

The post How New Immunity Passports Will Impact the Poor and the Vulnerable appeared first on Medika Life.