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YESTERDAY I was sent an image of a leaflet which seemed to be aimed at Muslims. It was headed ‘Vaccine Warning’ and ‘Vaccines = Poison’ and included ‘They are attempting to dismantle your family, your culture and your faith’. The person who sent it to me raised the possibility that it originated with a Far Right organisation attempting to sow discord and dissuade Muslims from gaining the protection afforded by the available vaccines. This seems a reasonable possibility as it contains at least some untruths about matters which might weigh heavily with followers of Islam.
For example: the vaccine contains animal products (not true), the vaccine has been cultured using aborted fetal cells HEK293 cells (not true), the vaccine will change your DNA (not true), Imams and Sheikhs have either been bought, paid or bribed to push the vaccine (no evidence is provided and I am extremely doubtful that this is true).
As my wife and I have been fully vaccinated and now have some protection against becoming very ill if we are exposed to the virus which causes Covid 19 and would like others to have the same protection, irrespective of their faith or lack of it, I quote below part of a more detailed statement which can be found at:
https://www.anic.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/AFC-Coronavirus-COVID-19-Vaccine-Fatwa.pdf
The Australian Fatwa Council consulted with Muslim doctors and medical experts who specialise in the field of vaccines and viruses seeking clarity on the composition of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine and its effects. The following was the outcome; The Muslim doctors and medical experts scientifically confirmed that the vaccines (specifically: Pfizer and AstraZeneca) do not contain any prohibited substances or ingredients and that they have met the clinical standards of the TGA (at this stage Pfizer vaccine only. Astra Zeneca TGA application for approval is in progress and is also expected to be approved by the TGA quite soon), deeming them safe.
Based on what was conveyed by the trusted Muslim doctors and medical experts, the vaccine for the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is permissible according to the Islamic law as there is no known religious harm attributed to being vaccinated nor does it contain any forbidden substances. The vaccine will be considered necessary if there is any possible risk of harm to other humans due to non-vaccination.
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THE expert group advising the Government on Stage 2 of the vaccination programme which will is now being extended to people under the age of 50 have chosen to continue with the present procedure of offering injections to people based upon age. This is by far the simplest procedure as information about a patient’s age is included in the medical record held by their doctor.
It also takes account of the fact that even with these relatively younger individuals, age remains the major risk factor. What was however striking about the graphic presented during the briefing was that it showed the significantly heightened level of risk to men in the 45 to 49 age group compared with women of the same age. Men have about twice the risk of women.
I previously pointed to this higher level of risk for men compared with women in my NV piece of January 27th ‘Men, Women, Covid and Risk’, though the disparity has attracted little or no attention in the broadcast or print media. This is in sharp contrast to the uncritical attention given by news outlets to the higher level of risk which may be suffered by some ethnic groups.
Significantly the speaker highlighted the need to encourage men under 50 to come forward for vaccination, as well as people from non-white backgrounds. Attention is often focused upon the reasons why some individuals from non-white backgrounds exhibit some reluctance to receive the vaccine. Often this is couched in terms of lack of trust or past experiences.
It would be difficult to claim that the public face of the NHS prioritises men’s health issues. Much attention is paid to promoting screening for breast and cervical cancers. Is there similar promotion of health issues affecting men?
Such services are available, screening for colo-rectal cancers and thin aortas are two examples, but there seems little effort to promote them.
Will the print and broadcast media take a stance which encourages men to come forward? Will any perceived reluctance of men to take up the offer of vaccination be couched in terms of lack of trust or past experiences with the Health Service? I’m not holding my breath!
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THE Government is rightly proud that almost 17 million people have received the first dose of a vaccine which it is hoped will make them safe from Covid 19. It has nothing to be proud of in the fact that almost half that number of people, 8 million, are living in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable housing, according to a recent report by the National Housing Federation. This figure is revealed in a report published today with the title ‘Coming Home: Tackling the housing crisis together’.
The new report describes as 'a national scandal' the fact that eight million people in England live in overcrowded, unaffordable, or unsuitable homes, and says that this is 'neither accidental nor inevitable… The present situation is unjust, and the burden of bad housing is falling unjustly on the poor'.
Among the list of recommendations:
- a 20-year political programme to improve the quality and affordability of the nation’s housing stock, agreed by all parties and thus immune to changing political fortunes;
- a redefinition of 'affordability' that relates to income rather than property prices;
- a short-term reform of the benefits system to meet the shortfall between housing support and the true cost of housing;
- a review of tenancy agreements, redressing the present imbalance, introducing an explicit duty of care of landlords for their tenants, and removing Section 21 (”no fault”) evictions;
- an improvement in the stock of temporary housing;
- new mechanisms for improving the existing housing stock, 11 per cent of which is defined as sub-standard, and making it more sustainable;
There is also a draft charter for new housing, which suggests it should be:
Sustainable: adapt and reuse existing building stock where possible; water, waste and energy designed to minimise impact on the environment: plant one tree per house.
Safe: landowner to maintain an interest and participate in the project; design criteria to be built into partnership agreements to ensure compliance.
Stable: encouragement to people to put down roots through community site-management schemes; reference to the wider community.
Sociable: mixed-use dwellings in walkable neighbourhoods; design to ensure that affordable houses are indistinguishable from private-tenure houses, and 'pepper-potted' throughout the site.
Satisfying: use design to create distinctiveness and encourage a sense of belonging; ensure that the development fits into the natural landscape.
Polly Neate the chief executive of the charity Shelter responded to the report by saying: 'It is brilliant to see the Church of England showing leadership and taking action to tackle our growing housing emergency. Looking at how church land can be best used to fight homelessness is extremely welcome.
'Homelessness isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of decades of political failure to build social homes. This is the reason over a quarter of a million people in England are homeless and trapped in temporary accommodation during the pandemic — half of them children.
'The Church is right that homes have to be affordable to local people and tied to local incomes. This is what social housing does, which is why we want to see the Church, the Government, and other landowners play their part in building a new generation of social homes.'
There may be a shortage of affordable housing but there has never been a shortage of worthy reports about the problem. It will be interesting to see if after all the fanfare it is allowed to fade into the background.
We can pray it does not or we can vote for the politicians who will recognise the fundamental economic forces that work against affordability and do something about it. Sixty per cent of the nation’s wealth is reckoned to be held in property, leading to its being regarded as a financial asset rather than a universal necessity. Are we willing to change that?
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EARLIER this month an article by Tom Taylor appeared on ‘The Mill’ website which contained the text of a letter from RMBC Director of Children’s Services Gail Hopper claimed that school staff had been ‘jumping the queue’ to get themselves vaccinated against Covid 19. The text is given below.
Inevitably this has been interpreted as it being teachers who are doing this and tenuously linked to Labour’s calls for these workers being prioritised over other groups.
When documents are ‘leaked’ like this it is worth asking who will gain? Certainly not the intended recipients.
This question is of more than passing interest as I am aware that the names of specific councillors who are also finding ways of jumping the queue by ‘volunteering’ at local vaccination centres have been passed to a Northern Voices editor and that at least one of the councillors named has been asked to comment on this report. Let’s hope s/he is conscientious at picking up their e-mails.
We live in interesting times!
Dear head teacher,
I am sorry to have to write to you all about this matter and hope that you will understand my purpose for doing so.
It has come to our attention that a booking link sent to NHS employees to book a vaccination slot at one of the identified hospital sites, has been inappropriately shared. This was not the intention when the non-transferable link was provided and should not have happened. Not surprisingly it is now spreading widely.
This testing site in the hospitals listed are for NHS patients, staff and social care staff only. This protects community sites for the older age and high risk groups. We know that by it being shared, some school based staff (and others), who are not part of the priority groups identified by government, have booked appointments. Indeed some been [sic] vaccinated. Others are now planning to do the same. Our concern is we are fully committed, to ensuring vaccinations are directed to priority groups first. Rochdale has a tight target to vaccinate all care home residents and staff, residents over 75 years and Clinically Extremely Vulnerable residents, along with NHS and social care staff by 15th February – if sufficient vaccine supplies reach us. This is a really challenging target. For every vaccine given to someone outside the priority groups, the risk is increased of our most vulnerable residents being delayed in receiving it.
The publicity of this happening would be very damaging for the borough. It will also increase the risk that NHSE cancels future supplies until it can be assured that the borough follows the required process. This would be disastrous, given the success so far in delivering up to 1200 daily vaccinations.
I recognise that some colleagues feel unhappy that schools based staff have not been prioritised by government in the first two groups. I fully sympathise with that and if the choice was ours, schools staff would have been in the first group. We continue to lobby government about this issue. However, it cannot be right that individuals use unauthorised routes when to do so denies others with entitlement. The question that I would ask is how would any of us feel if, by one of our colleagues accessing a vaccination, our mother or father was denied.
As I’m sure you’ll recognise, we have to take action to prevent this activity. With immediate effect health and social care staff will be required to attend their booked appointment with ID and a letter that matches that ID from their employer / local authority. We have requested that anyone that cannot provide this be refused access.
We ask that you advise any colleagues who have accessed the link and plan to or have already booked an appointment not to do so. We would rather avoid the embarrassment of them not gaining admission to the vaccination site. Please ask anyone with an appointment booked to cancel it quickly, so it can be offered to those in priority groups. Could you also impress on staff the importance of not passing on this link to any others inside or outside the borough. Some may have received it from contacts in other boroughs as this link is shared with Bury, Oldham and Salford. Any such sharing undermines the efforts to ensure vaccinations are directed to priority groups first. We continue to work locally to identify how we can ensure that all schools colleagues can be invited for vaccination and will try to do this as quickly as possible.
Thank you for your assistance in addressing this difficult issue.
Yours sincerely,
Gail Hopper
Director of Children’s Services
Rochdale Borough Council
Editorial Comment: THE Spectator ran an article on the 6th, January by Alistair Haimes, who had until then been a enthusiastic lockdown sceptic, which called on others to support the current government Lockdown. As a consequence of this both Will Jones on the LOCKDOWN SCEPTIC WEBSITE and Les May on the NV Blog have responded with their views on posts displayed below on the NV Blog.
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Scepticism is supposed to be the bedrock of science. But where scepticism shades into cynicism it can be as blind to changing events as the unexamined credence it claims to displace. Scientific belief should be based on informed supposition which is then rigorously tested against the evidence — that is the basis of the scientific method. There should be no shame in changing opinions and assumptions when facts change. We start with assumptions, test them against the evidence (which itself changes) and then use that conclusion to repeat the process, ad infinitum. So if conclusions don’t change when facts change, something might have gone awry.
As an example: your view on the merits of the current winter lockdown versus the Halloween lockdown. First: do you think a lockdown is prima facie defensible? To some people, ‘no!’; to far more people, ‘normally no, but it depends’. Whatever initial view you put into your decision hopper, now try to bend that assumption around the first input of information: the healthcare system either (a) clearly has capacity left, apparently running at below average levels for the time of year, as it was in October; or (b) might credibly need to triage fairly basic healthcare within, say, three weeks as seems to be the case now, or so we are told. Whether we are in (a) or (b) should change your opinion; if it doesn’t, you might be doing this wrong.
Now, add in the game-changer of approved, effective vaccines. Your opinion should be different before and after the approval of the vaccines (2 December for Pfizer, 30 December for Oxford). Put simply, it is perfectly justifiable to be against open-ended restrictions in a world with no vaccine, but to think a brief period of restriction while vaccines are rolled out is sensible, and personally I know many lockdown sceptics whose views pivoted on the day the first vaccine was approved.
Finally, consider the pace of the epidemic. Have cases apparently stabilised, as at end of October, or has there been an out-of-leftfield development like the Kentish variant, which experts believe might be at least 50 per cent more transmissible with no obvious sign of deceleration? Whatever the state of your opinion on lockdown so far, this development should alter it at least somewhat.
You might be stridently, philosophically, against lockdowns whatever the consequences, or you might be a dour socialist zealot who instinctively thinks that the cilice should always be tightened in a crisis; but for everyone in-between, allowing opinion to change with evidence like this is likely an excellent idea. Where opinion becomes rigid it can also become brittle, and often doesn’t age well.
Personally (not that it matters given I’m just a punter rather than in government) I have unashamedly been sceptical of the government’s use of interventions throughout the epidemic, though I’m closer to the moderate than the fundamentalist wing. I thought that the March 2020 lockdown was sensible and inevitable while disease parameters and treatment protocols were clarified and healthcare capacity was built, but believe it dragged on far too long, inflicting incredible social, economic and collateral health damage when the first wave of Covid was obviously waning with the seasons. It appeared the government was allowing opinion-polls to lead it down a path of ever more severe restriction rather than examining realistic targeted alternatives that could tide us over sustainably until a vaccine arrived (which I admit came miles faster than I’d imagined possible), and hadn’t stopped to gauge the damage done along the way.
You can of course understand the bind. There is a crisis, the government needs to do something, lockdown is something it can do, so it does lockdown. It might well be the only lever to pull initially, but that doesn’t mean the lever should stay pulled. Who knows, it may even be the best answer in the medium-term, but it is hard to believe that scrutinising every cost and alternative along the way wasn’t a very worthwhile exercise even so.
For lockdown two, like many others, I thought that the case in November was not well argued, was farcically presented with scary out-of-date death charts and poorly administered (creating the boom Halloween weekend by leaking plans on the Friday night was absolutely unforgiveable).
Every intervention, after all, has a beginning and an end, and the degree of social mixing from the ‘one last shindig’ at the beginning to the ‘thank God that’s over’ effect at the end may conceivably outweigh the temporary reduction in R — such ‘forcing events’ cause discrete social circles to overlap which otherwise wouldn’t intersect.
But in the event, the key moment in autumn (possibly during lockdown) wasn’t underground kids parties or news presenters’ knees-ups, it was the emergence of the Kentish variant. Some have hypothesised that the variant emerged from the way we treat Covid sufferers. Hospitals with chronically ill patients create living petri dishes for mutation (it is worth remembering that a quarter of all infections are still presumed hospital acquired). Add in treatments like convalescent plasma (blood extract containing antibodies) and there are then all the pressures needed to evolve a mutant strain. We will, like good scientists, have to await more data.
Lockdown three, I’m sorry to say (and I can hear the howls from sceptics as I write this), is justifiable, practically and ethically. Given the rollout of the vaccine, the emergence of the new variant and the plausible risk of the healthcare system falling over, there is probably now no realistic alternative. Whatever one’s objections to the first two lockdowns, on both cost-benefit and libertarian grounds, it is at least a defensible position to acknowledge the merit of a brief lockdown during a maximum-speed vaccination campaign to minimise morbidity and mortality along the way.
The calculation is entirely different now from that of the previous two lockdowns. Given the vaccine, the variant and the healthcare situation, the current restriction can be supported (regretfully) without cognitive dissonance by those who opposed the previous lockdowns vehemently and vocally. It is either bad logic, bad faith or fundamentalism to argue otherwise.
This is a position that will make no friends. The zero-Covid Sanhedrin (whose ship sailed long ago in a connected Europe) and the libertarian sceptics (very few of whom are actually anti-vaxx by the way) will both find reasons why this nuanced view is outrageous.
The big, big difference this time is this: an opening in a rock without an exit is a cave — but if you can see an exit, it’s a tunnel. The previous two lockdowns were caves. It was dark and nasty, possibly involving bats, and we had no idea how we were going to get out except back into the same world we’d entered from. But this time really is different: we’re going not into a cave but into a tunnel, there is a credible exit strategy that we can see and believe in, and we’re scheduled to emerge in about 100 days (give-or-take) into a country where almost all the most vulnerable will have been vaccinated and where lockdown is not just lifted but dismantled, hopefully never to be seen again, and good riddance.
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by Les May
THE new vaccine developed to provide protection against the SARS Cov2 virus which causes the disease which we know as Covid 19, has one huge advantage; it does not contain any attenuated or killed virus particles. Potentially this makes it an even safer candidate for extensive use.
The four letters mRNA stand for messenger RiboNucleicAcid. Viruses whether they infect, bacteria, fungi, plants or animals, are essentially strings of instructions, (messages) which tell infected cells what to produce and how it should assemble the components. An mRNA vaccine works by copying just a small part of these instructions. It’s the bit which instructs the cell how to produce just the molecules (antigens) found on the surface of the virus which the immune system of our body recognises. The immune system then produces antibodies which can lock onto the antigen on the surface of any virus particles if the individual becomes infected.
Because the synthesis of the mRNA is essentially a chemical process done in the laboratory there is no possibility of virus particles being introduced into the vaccine. But there’s some bad new as well.
The molecules of mRNA are not stable at higher temperatures and in this case ‘higher temperatures’ are still very much colder than your average deep freeze. After manufacture the vaccine must be kept at about minus 80 degrees Celsius at all times, otherwise it will degrade and become non-functional.
This is not a problem for laboratories and hospitals, but it is for local surgeries and pharmacies, both of which have been suggested as locations where the vaccine could be administered.
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