One of Them.

            

Beating to the Fastnet Rock

     August blues, the summer and also our life on Sherkin are slipping away. We are in the 'no man's land' between houses. Recovering from cancer treatment, my sense of the shortness of life is sharpened again. I look back over the last  half century, that in one sense has slipped away so quickly, and in another seems a long time. 

      All along, ‘America’ has been ‘fighting the good fight’, expending unimaginable amounts of blood and treasure in the noble cause of democracy and freedom. Don’t we all love that cause? But in spite of vastly overwhelming military superiority, it has been a story of failure. After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, is it not about time we asked ourselves why do things keep turning out like this? Is there some underlying epistemological mistake? Do we need a different approach? Any chance of a reboot? 

       It should take no great wisdom to realise that bombs and bullets do not win hearts and minds, and even that ‘if a man were to try to buy love, contempt is all he would gain’. While from time to time lip-service is paid to such sentiments, one must conclude that our managers are not really interested in them, but that what really interests them is money and power. Never mind your hearts and minds; this kind of power bases itself on fear, and naturally finds an enemy very useful, both to provide cover and to put the wind up supporters and victims alike. Fear and hatred of an enemy enable the extortion of vast amounts of money, and after all the purpose of doing so is served by one great long failure much better than by quick success!

 

      Now it seems we are embarked on another kind of war, against that diabolical virus! Again, success is proving elusive. Again, the rich are very much better off than the poor, and the mega-rich are making vast amounts of money out of it. This time there is an even bigger power-grab going on, while fear of that alien enemy is proving a very useful tool indeed to some people. Again, the Powers will be boasting that things are going fine and victory is just around the corner. But supposing we were really serious about winning all these wars, how might we set about it? There was that talk about loving your enemies, though apparently it did not get very far.

  

         Against a deluge of propaganda, where does a layman such as myself start? It is only by sifting and comparing the statements of experts that we can make some kind of a start. Mr Paul Reid, chief executive of the Health Service here in Ireland, while celebrating the ‘phenomenal’ take-up of vaccines on the radio, professed to be "very conscious" to ensure that parents and guardians of 12- to 15-year-olds "think about it carefully and receive the right advice about vaccination.” 

 

          How can anyone honestly think it in the interest of such youngsters to be vaccinated?  According to the HSE itself, ‘The risk of severe Covid-19 illness for children is low, with a hospitalisation rate in Ireland for those with no underlying conditions of less than 1 in 100,000.’  The notion that it will prevent them spreading infection to their seniors only makes some kind of sense if one thinks in terms of ‘herd immunity’; it’s precisely that sort of thinking that we who see life in personal terms must reject.

 

         Anyway according to a report in the Guardian on 11/08/21, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said in evidence to MPs that Reaching herd immunity is “not a possibility” with the current Delta variant, and the fact that vaccines did not stop the spread of Covid meant reaching the threshold for overall immunity in the population was “mythical”. 

          Each individual  has their own circumstances and their own immune system. A rational response to the virus involves  considering the circumstances in which people are living and also the state of their personal immune systems. What makes some people’s immune system so much more effective than other’s might indeed involve considerable speculation, but does not seem to figure in the societal response to the pandemic.

 

         For my part, in refusing a vaccination, I am also declining to be part of any herd. I am aware that sooner or later I will probably run into some coronavirus, just as I reckon to run into a cold or flu every winter. I do not deny that this covid is more of a challenge. I hope to be able to overcome it, with the help of God and his gifts, in which incidentally I include medical science as well as homeopathy. At all events, as I replied to someone who complained that ‘I was one of them’ - the anti-vaxers - , ‘Somebody has to do it’!  However long it takes, I expect that the war on the pandemic will eventually transpire to be yet another dreadful mistake, and I hope that there will be someone around to show that there is another way!