Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, has called for a 'discussion' about compulsory vaccination mandates, while making it clear that she personally is in favour of them. She finds it astonishing that 147m Europeans have turned their backs on the 'lifesaving vaccines'. Well, she obviously hasn't been reading my blog! Nor any of the many other commentators who share such views.
In an effort to make what I have to say more accessible for such a discussion, I have whipped through this year's posts and compiled a little collection of relevant thoughts...-
...It is one of the big theoretical objections to vaccinations, that they bypass and rather sabotage the natural workings of our immune systems. Are we supposed to get yet another jab for every kind of virus that comes at us?
There is the question mark over these substances that we fire into our veins so blithely. Neither the manufacturers nor their insurance companies are prepared to stand over them, and they insist on governments taking the responsibility for any ‘complications’. It is anyway of course very hard to actually prove when the vaccines are to blame. In the case of the swine ‘flu vaccine, it took ten years and much effort to pin the blame for narcolepsy on it, to the extent that the Irish Government had to pay compensation, though GSK still refuses to accept responsibility. The fact that the current crop of vaccines has been turned out under massive pressure does not augur well.
- Sorry Doc, I Won’t Be Taking the Vaccination, 06/01/21
Fishing methods that destroy fishing, 'husbandry' that leaves the land dead, food that does not sustain, 'defence' that would make the Earth uninhabitable, 'comms' that have people locked into their own silos and unable to communicate outside them, 'sport' that leaves participants physically wrecked, 'health-care' that leaves people with all kinds of pathologies, transport that chokes both itself and the people using it... - they frequently go under the name of Progress and their enthusiasts will proudly state that 'they believe in Science'. …
The thing is, there are always disadvantages and snags attached to technological progress,- icebergs and rocks presenting dangers to navigation; we cannot know them all ourselves. The trick is to only listen to people who one has reason to believe really know what they are talking about, who realise the risks, lay them out and give reason to believe that they can be overcome.
… Technology has put us in the way of making the world uninhabitable, so I suppose that it will have to come into play big time if we are to find our way forward, but how are we to get it back in its box - to be a good servant rather than a bad master?
… Then again, as regards the pandemic, I have no reason to doubt my homeopath when he says that he has been treating Covid successfully, with no serious problems and none of his patients having to go to hospital. This is no reason not to be sensible about avoiding it,- and homeopaths were to the fore in promoting hygiene in the 19th century- but I do object to the massive command and control effort to dragoon us into doing so. We will have to live with this disease around in the end, like all the others, and we will; but it is not hard to foresee that there will be no lack of occasions for taking that authoritarian approach to things, as we get deeper into these coming times. Can we envisage an alternative? What might it look like?
… I shall conclude with a quote from p.386 of Barack Obama's book (A Promised Land) with reference to the 1976 swine flu epidemic,- 'President Ford (Republican)... had fast-tracked mandatory vaccinations... with the result that more Americans developed a neurological disorder connected to the vaccine than died from the flu'. There may be some circumstances in which the balance of risk falls in favour of being vaccinated, but if one would like to avoid those famous 'complications', and a command and control future to boot, I would recommend that by and large one should eschew the vaccines!
- Turning the Titanic, 18/02/21
...the State, which is heading down a road that is likely to alienate many hearts and minds, while losing real sovereignty to that web of powerful interests which is none the less real for all the difficulties of putting a name on it without descending into the realm of conspiracy theories!
Some kind of a start was made (in finding a name for it) by President Eisenhower when he coined the term 'the military-industrial complex', to which he feared that Americans themelves might lose their sovereignty. Perhaps a much older term. 'the gates of Sheol', comes nearer to the mark! Anyway today we must at least acknowledge that we need a wider frame of reference than Ike's; consider how the current Government in London hands out lucrative contracts to their friends in connection with the pandemic, or that, according to the Guardian, 'Barclays analyst Carter Gould is predicting sales of $21.5bn in 2021' for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, while the Bio/NTech founders 'became multibillionaires last year, when the potential of the vaccine and the deal with Pfizer prompted the shares to surge.' Meanwhile 'the Serum Institute boss Adar Poonawalla has rented a Mayfair mansion for £50,000 a week'. Indeed there is obviously some serious wheeling and dealing going on!
So do we have to speak of the 'military-medical-industrial complex', not to mention other aspects of 'big tech'? How about pesticides? We have been told that they are essential for us to be able to feed the population. How do you fancy our chances, living in a world with no insects, butterflies, birds? After all, even the atom bomb was thought to do good at the time, putting a stop to that nasty war with the Japanese, and still a majority in Britain and America seem to approve. What chance of humanity's survival in a world depending on far bigger bombs for security? But is it remotely fair to associate vaccines with pesticides and bombs?
As a matter of fact, I would not absolutely rule out their use in strictly limited and emergency circumstances, which would also be my own attitude to guns and vaccines alike, - but it would be with extreme regret, and as a matter of policy to be strenuously avoided. Is vaccination to become a permanent feature of our lives, along with all the other horrors of the modern world? Meanwhile what you do not use, you lose, and our own immune system is surely no exception.
As a gardener, let me take the less extreme example of pesticides. In order to avoid their use, one has to look for the flaws in one's set-up, to think organically of soil and plant health and avoid monoculture and over-crowding; remember beauty too, keep flowers and variety in there! Actually Nature is on our side; ….
- Easter Proclamations, Old and New, 05/04/21
Day after day, the miseries of the pandemic are paraded at the top of the news. Funny we hardly hear of many other plagues actually killing more people, wars, pollution, other diseases and starvation! Meanwhile the massive propaganda blitz in favour of vaccination presents it as the only game in town, as if it alone is capable of delivering us from all the miseries of the pandemic, while people questioning this are represented as purveyors of doom and gloom. Actually answering their questions or attending to the points they raise hardly features,- they are generally merely dismissed as cranks, conspiracy theorists, etc. …
...allow me to report that covid 19 has proved quite amenable to homeopathic treatment, and indeed there are prophylactics that appear to be as successful as any vaccine in preventing it. There are also other holistic treatments, ones that do not consist of arrogantly brushing aside our immune system, but rather of seeing what we can do, respectfully, to enhance it. Zinc, vitamin D supplements, among other things, have their place in overcoming the deficiencies of our own particular constitution and life-style. Collectively alternative therapies do however have the 'disadvantage' of threatening the interests of a multi-billion dollar industry, with very many interests vested in it.
It's not that I would necessarily rule out the use of vaccines, in the fire-fighting mode that allopathic medicine excels at. I do however much doubt if they constitute a viable mass method of moving beyond the pandemic, and Fiona and I agree that they do not offer either of us a desirable way out individually. People are not all identical bio-chemical machines, and the road to healthy living is different for each of us. We all have our problems, and we must also remember that none of us will get out of this world alive. What is important is living in a vibrant way; while we all should try to live our lives to the utmost, prolonging physical life in a fearful, zombie fashion when our vital force is spent and especially when our every move is commanded by a controlling Government, does not avail! Meanwhile, who would buy a new car from a manufacturer who does not stand over it, one that is likely to be obsolete by the end of the year?
Does a future beckon in which we must be taking shots for every disease and variant that comes along, while not alone depending on governments to pay for them, but also to pick up the tab for casualties? The Irish Government is already paying out millions in compensation for victims of the swine flu vaccine. What sort of a bill is coming down the tracks for covid ones, while we have to take more and more of them? But the homeopathic approach trains and strengthens our natural immunity; they say it is like training a horse to jump higher and higher fences, and will tell you how sickly children thrive better after overcoming a disease like measles, which our mothers used to send us around to the neighbours in order to catch and get over with, while we were young.
...As an 'anti-vaxer' one feels rather as a pacifist must have done in Germany in the 1930s, but as surely as we most urgently need to find an alternative to war as a way of coping with the difficulties of life, so we need to stop thinking about this pandemic as a war, with vaccines as our weapons. I do not underestimate its miseries, but this pandemic in itself is a less drastic challenge than that other one, and furthermore we need to see it as a potentially creative opportunity.
- The Alternative to Vaccination, 16/04/21
...Tired as I am of hearing mass vaccination being preached in the name of 'science', and Israel being held up as a good example of its benefits, I have a juicy anecdote from a niece who lives there. She is a student nurse, but just like everyone else, she was virtually compelled to take the vaccination. When she reported uncomfortable side effects lasting a month, she was told to forget it, it could have nothing to do with the vaccination, and no records were being kept of reported side-effects anyway. How's that for 'scientific method' in the application of a brand new therapy?!
Simple questions remain unanswered. What are the reasons why covid passes so many by lightly, while it kills others? Why not put the emphasis on understanding and enhancing our immune systems rather that usurping their function, undermining them? What resources are being put into researching such possibilities? Oh silly, of course one could not patent them, and it is precisely the possibility of making everyone depend on something that one can patent that makes the monster capitalists salivate! Where does this path of depending on big Pharma (or Monsanto) to keep us alive end? Is it actually practical in the long run? If the vaccines are so safe, why are their manufacturers not required to take responsibility when they go wrong? Why are effective steps not taken to track side-effects? 13 people died in a Bantry nursing home within 10 days of being vaccinated. Why were there no post-mortems nor efforts to determine the cause of death? Why are there plans to vaccinate children?
Are there signs that our society is losing the ability to sustain criticism, let alone pay attention to it? Would we happen to be deep into the prioritisation of technology and 'scientific' experimentation, not to mention the commercial interests, over elementary human rights? Are we not treating our bodies in precisely the same way that we have been treating the rest of nature in this technological age, with the disastrous results that are only now beginning to be widely recognised after so many years of being known to science?
What Irish government would want to fall out with Big Pharma, when it earns it so much tax, or for that matter, how many doctors' conscience would rise to forgoing that handy €60 a shot and falling out with the establishment? The Nazis and the Communists exploited such weaknesses to catastrophic extremes, but the insidious alliance of high technology and market capitalism makes me particularly nervous, although I am not living in fear of the bang on the door, yet, thank God. Are we not however in danger of travel bans and what not? More than ever, my mind goes back to those who tried to stand up to the 20th century totalitarians. Things may be more subtle these days, but who, I ask, is being indoctrinated now, and who is really thinking for themselves?
- The Rock We Stand On, 30/04/21
The trauma of the pandemic yields a sharp reminder of our interdependence; it is time to realise that if we do not combine effectively at the personal and family level, we will fall victims to one form of horrendous depersonalized totalitarianism or another.
- A Good Moment Again, 22/06/21
How each one can foster his immune system is something that each will have to work out for himself. However, I shall throw out a few 'straws in the wind'. Governments can't be expected to help very much, but nonetheless, we are not alone and cannot do it alone. We need to be more socialised at the inter-personal, as opposed to the mass level. We need to reduce our dependence on cities and mass everything, including health, entertainment, sport etc. A football game actually participated in is worth any amount of mass hype. We should not allow our lives to be 'all in the head', but should participate in the physical labour of existence. We need to be careful of what we eat; locally produced, organic food is to be preferred to the produce of agri-business.
The list goes on, you can add to it in your own way. Let it be repeated; the epidemic is a cry for attention from a wounded planet. There is indeed no going back to 'normal life'. A new world is struggling to be born; we must welcome it with joy! Joy and the sense of being loved and of life having meaning are the prerequisites for healthy immune systems, as is the ability to cope with seemingly endless set-backs, disappointments and death itself. The integration of mind and spirit, reason and faith are conditions for this too.
We must not be dismayed, or allow ourselves to be overtaken by despondency! 'The whole of creation groans in one great act of giving birth!' We shall be amazed where the answers come from; certainly they will not come from 'getting back to normal' and the same old same old!
- A Third Way? 11/07/21
…Dread of disaster took on a more universal, total nature with the advent of the technological age and the First World War. As the London-Welsh poet David Jones put it with gentle under-statement in his preface to In Parenthesis, his most evocative account of life in the trenches:- 'That our culture has accelerated every line of advance into the territory of physical science is well appreciated - but not so well understood are the unforeseen, subsidiary effects of this achievement.' Yet how could one possibly describe the mechanised hell of that kind of warfare as an achievement?
Perhaps Long Covid is like Post Traumatic Stress, in that it leaves the sufferers unable to suppress anxiety and dread? Maybe a problem they share is that they find themselves no longer believing in the doctrines of Supreme Scientific Progress! …
…fifty years later, it may be much more generally acknowledged that, for instance, the ‘3.4 million aircraft sorties and 30 billion pounds of munitions, which killed some 2 million civilians and wounded 5 million more'* did not constitute an intelligent response to the threat of communism in Vietnam, let alone a humane or justifiable one. As for threatening to blow the whole world to bits.... The question today is, are our responses to current threats, such as the pandemic and climate change, any more intelligent? Am I so very far astray in thinking that throwing vaccines at the pandemic is not unlike throwing bombs at communism?
Can anyone seriously imagine that our culture, let alone our politics, are on a radically better footing today?
- Farewell to Sherkin, 02/08/21
...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 an artificial ‘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!
-One of Them, 15/08/21
Mr Johnson ... has me... feeling pretty queasy after reading coverage of his recent Conservative Party Conference. He bases his shtick on what to me are two massive waves of pure delusion, but what to many other of my fellow humans are apparently wonderful. What is particularly intriguing for me is that it is very often quite distinct and diverse characters who buy them, and they may buy into both or just one of them.
I refer of course to Brexit and Vaxit, by which I mean the lie that vaccines are the way to get us out of the covid pandemic. As but a casual observer, I have watched the way, in country after country, the roll-out of vaccines has been tracked by a surge in infection. I see how the first to be vaccinated, the Israelis, are still struggling and embarking on their fourth round of shots, yet they seem to be more committed to Vaxit than anyone. Funny that, because they perhaps embody the most committed of the 'nation states', and thereby provide whatever much of the ideology of Brexit that may lay claim to some intellectual and spiritual seriousness. At the same time, the epidemic has provided great cover for the havoc wrought by the said Brexit.
- On Moving Back to West Clare, 08/10/21
...I am more appalled than ever by what I can only describe as evil. In the case of the mainsteam media, it takes little effort to get the message of the incessant propaganda. That it is mostly mere propaganda is easy to spot also, since the 'opposition' is so thoroughly marginalised and suppressed, in spite of the fact that anyone who would rather think and investigate for themselves can find this out, contrary to the narrative that such opposition is a matter of ignorance. Still the evidence is piling up that the theory of vaccines being the way out of the pandemic is nonsense, and it will be very interesting to see what happens as the testimony of many highly qualified people, who are frequently acting to their own financial detriment, becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. People will eventually see the collaborators for what they are.
Unfortunately 'collaborators' is a word one might use not only for those also who are making money out of the pandemic, but who endorse 'vaxit' - the idea that vaccines are the way out - frequently more for reasons of convenience or conformity than anything else. Not that I do not sympathise with them, nor underestimate the very considerable pressure that they are coming under, yet even if one rejects the view that the whole vaccine effort is counterproductive and is making the situation generally worse, it should still be possible to recognise that such pressure is outrageous. For a start, whatever happens to Habeas Corpus - the principle at the basis of our legal rights that our bodies belong to ourselves alone?
However talk of collaborators begs the question, who are the principals? One might start trying to answer this question by looking at the millionaires busy becoming billionaires on the back of it, but it doesn't simply seem to be a matter of money. Here is fertile ground for speculation and conspiracy theories. I doubt if these are helpful, but all the talk from people who claim to be environmentalists along the lines that 'there are just too many people in the world' gives justifiable ground for suspicion and indeed alarm.
What kind of schizophrenia results if one imagines one can love life but hate human beings? George Monbiot concludes a rousing call to save the planet thus:- 'We will endure only if we cease to consent. The 19th-century democracy campaigners knew this, the suffragettes knew it, Gandhi knew it, Martin Luther King knew it. The environmental protesters who demand systemic change have also grasped this fundamental truth.... What they understand is history’s most important lesson. Our survival depends on disobedience.' It is curious how he completely fails to so much as countenance the application of this lesson to Vaxit.
Maybe however we would fundamentally agree that the pandemic and the environmental crisis call jointly for us to rapidly adopt a more organic way of life, and to turn away from excessive individualism. The fact that the official, sanctioned response to covid heavily reinforces precisely this individualism, and the anxiety that goes with it, tells its own story,- one with Brexit and Vaxit in there together again! You might think also, especially from perusing the Guardian, that a dose of climate anxiety is what we all need, but I do not think that people act sensibly or reasonably under the influence of anxiety, but rather are prone to all kinds of foolishness.
Anxiety will not get us out of the pandemic nor solve the environmental crisis, and neither will it enable us to envision and build the exciting future that beckons if we can only find our way to it.
- Home from Home, 31/10/21
Here am I, trying out my new Chinese hat, supplied by Williams' hardware store in Kilkee. It is designed to make sure the wearer does not share his thoughts, let alone indulge in kissing and hugging. It is just the ticket for a population living in fear of a virus that can indeed be nasty and dangerous, but when properly and promptly treated, is not a disease that a healthy immune system cannot deal with fairly easily. It is ideal for reminding them not to think dangerous thoughts against the party line, and in particular, not to put two and two together when the roll-out of vaccines is promptly followed by a huge surge in cases of the infection that they were supposed to prevent, and even to accept the notion that the solution is yet more of the same vaccines!
…. I am still struggling to understand how it is that myself, aged 75, following cancer treatment and with a heart condition, am supposed on account of being unvaccinated to represent a threat to those who are double vaccinated. They evidently havn't much confidence in their vaccines, and they are quite right there, but do they not see how they are standing logic on its head? I suppose one shouldn't be surprised really, especially if one has paid a bit of attention to literature and the history of the last century and a half.
- The Chinese Hat, 13/11/21
We can discuss it as much as you like, Frau Von der Leyen, but please understand one thing... the likes of myself will never accept compulsory vaccination, and consider it be an outrageous and totally unacceptable infringement of basic human rights.
