Mere authoritarianism and its role in COVID

Chris Whitty offers an olive branch to vaccine refusers by saying they’ve mainly been taken in by online misinformation. One such conspiracy theory is that the restrictions imposed by those like Whitty are nothing to do with preventing COVID, and everything to do with coercing people into having vaccines whose actual value is suspect, and whose serious dangers are well-documented. Why would anyone ever think that way?

Take, for example, the vaccine passports that were never going to happen here, but appeared anyway in the same Plan B which Prof Whitty was pushing in his TV appearance. They’ve been in use in France since July, with far wider and stricter application than here, so let’s use that country as an example. How effective are they?

Pretty clearly they’re not effective at all at slowing infection (as Boris Johnson must have known before introducing them here): two near-vertical exponential cliffs of cases since their introduction prove that conclusively. But now President Macron reveals that epidemiological benefit was never the purpose – they have been introduced to “piss off anti-vaxxers,” in Macron’s own words, and so coerce them to be vaccinated. Since there is little to no evidence that vaccination itself has a materially beneficial effect on preventing the virus spreading, it can’t even be described as an “indirect” policy, but must be for some other purpose entirely.

We’re entitled to conclude that the motive for them is nothing to do with COVID, and is either due to corrupt collusion with Big Pharma, or an attempt to further the Great Reset of Macron’s sponsor, the WEF. Both of these may be documented quite easily from primary sources like the legal records relating to Pfizer, or the WEF website. What has to be taken on more dubious authority are not these possibilities, but the false claims about vaccine passports as public health tools from Macron, and the demonstrably dodgy statistics of Whitty throughout the pandemic.

But let me turn to another “online conspiracy theory,” which is that it’s dead easy to find individuals testifying to serious harm from the vaccines. In fact, it’s even easy offline – I have been acquainted with just one person who died of COVID, back in February 2020, but find friends mentioning suspicious casesf vaccine damage wherever I go: tinnitus, cardiac arrest, stroke…And if individual stories are unconvincing, John Dee’s analysis of the latest EudraVigilance data shows a death rate from vaccines of 1:10,000, which was in the same ballpark as the under-50 mortality from COVID even before Omicron and natural immunity lowered the odds. The serious adverse reaction rate is, of course, much greater.

Anyway, one anecdotal case of interest here is that of Lydia McGrew, a significant Christian philosophical voice particularly through the website What’s Wrong with the World , which I’ve followed for at least seven years. I’ve cited Lydia in two blogs here and here, and her book Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts is on my shelf.

Anyway, she now appears in conversation with the redoubtable Bret Weinstein, describing the debilitating and generalised symptoms she has suffered since the day she was injected with the Pfizer vaccine in April. She is neither a fantasist nor a conspiracist, but a significant intellectual whose testimony can be trusted. She has been seriously damaged by the “safe and effective vaccine,” and not only is that a shame in itself, but it’s a scandal that the likes of Chris Whitty, of apparently meagre intellectual capacity himself, should categorize her as a purveyor of misinformation. Condemnations like that should be reserved for vaccine manufacturers who manipulate and withhold data about adverse effects for financial gain.


In other news, the vaccines are so wonderfully effective that Sir Keir Starmer, the head of Her Majesty’s opposition, has twice had to self-isolate after testing positive, despite triple vaccination. But hey, Chris Whitty says vaccines are the answer, so our part is simply to trust and obey.

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About Jon Garvey

Training in medicine (which was my career), social psychology and theology. Interests in most things, but especially the science-faith interface. The rest of my time, though, is spent writing, playing and recording music.
This entry was posted in Medicine, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Mere authoritarianism and its role in COVID

  1. Michal says:

    Hi, this is my first post here.

    I enjoy reading your blog. Could I ask a question? What do you think about this author’s articles?

    https://medium.com/@tgof137

    For example, these two articles – https://medium.com/@tgof137/age-of-omicron-a52a6fcbf581

    or this

    https://medium.com/@tgof137/joe-rogan-could-help-end-the-pandemic-1541f1a2f471

    Or you will be interested and point to some of his other articles so we can come up with something.
    I ask or it seems to me that I am already lost in all this – what is a lie and what is true …

    • Avatar photo Jon Garvey says:

      Hi Michal, and welcome to The Hump.

      The blog doesn’t make its author’s credentials clear, but he seems to be Ryan P. Gilley, with a PhD in respiratory infections and immunology, and a bunch of academic papers. So he’s qualified to comment on Covid.

      On the other hand, he seems to be a staunch proponent of the line that anyone doubting the world’s official strategy of lockdowns and mass-vaccination is not only mistaken, but a dangerous anti-vaxxer, and my brief look at his articles suggests to me he’s being selective in his use of data (appears to ignore VAERS, for example), and blind to the massive adverse effects of the policies of the last two years, that have turned a real but not unique problem into an unstable and totalitarian world.

      So, for example, he discusses mandatory vaccination as a useful option, before deciding it’s a bit heavy-handed. That seems willfully blind to the history of compulsory treatments and hard-won democratic freedoms.

      In an ideal world, his views and those of the scientists (in particular) he opposes would be equally represented in the arena of ideas, and could be debated. As it is, his approach is enforced by a host of agencies, and all the opposition actively censored: remember that Joe Rogan, whom he critiques, has been censored by Twitter (as was the former US President and many others), and any position that relies on silencing its opponents thereby weakens its own credibility.

      None of us can keep abreast of all the information, but when I see the many obvious ways in which my own government, not to mention others, abuse evidence, I conclude that if their case was good, they wouldn’t need to use propaganda and behavioural manipulation.

      I’m also impressed to have observed, over last two years, how many working doctors and scientists have gradually moved from broad acceptance of the official line to real anxiety about the agenda behind it.

      As in other controversial areas, the old principle of “Follow the Money” (augmented, maybe, by “Follow the Power”) seems to hold good. I tend to trust experts who are retired or independent of professional pressures (eg by already having their Nobel Prize!) over those who stand to gain by supporting the mainstream, or to lose by opposing it.

      Hope that helps explain where I’m coming from!

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