In a free society people should be allowed to campaign for whatever policy they want, even if the campaign is for a policy that is completely off the wall, or stupid or even offensive. However the proviso should be that the campaign, for whatever it is, is peaceful. Words do not hurt but actions most surely do and the dividing line for me between legitimate campaigning and unacceptable and illegitimate activities, is the use of violence.
In the USA there is increasing evidence that the anti vaccine movement has crossed the line that separates campaigning from violence. The excellent and well worth reading medical blog Respectful Insolence has a worrying report on anti vaccination campaigners starting to engage in either the threat of violence or actual violence itself.
My position is that vaccines are a damned good thing. They’ve saved more lives than almost any other medical intervention apart from Penicillin in my view. I’m old enough to have seen the last vestiges of the ravages of Polio and I’m extremely thankful for the vaccinations that have protected both myself and my son from this horrible, debilitating and sometimes lethal disease.
However my strong positive position of vaccines, including vaccines against coronavirus, does not make me want to silence my opponents. On the contrary I want the opponents to be able to speak in order that they can be argued against, which I believe they should be. Even if I can’t convince an individual anti vaccination advocate to change their views, I can at least help to educate those other listeners to the conversation, who might be be tempted to follow an anti vaccination path, to think again about their position.
But what is happening in the United States at the moment is not debate, far from it. It is instead violent thuggery being used by anti vaccination extremists in order to terrorise pro-vaccine advocates and even pharmacists who are offering vaccinations against covid, a disease that has so far taken the lives of over 644,000 Americans.
Dr David Gorski, the medical doctor behind Respectful Insolence has been monitoring the activities of the anti vaccination advocates for a very long time, at least a decade or more and has said that he had seen from 2015 onwards, much more violent rhetoric being used by anti vaccination advocates. He pointed out that high profile conduits for anti vaccination sentiment such as Natural News and its publisher Mike Adams have had a history of pushing out violent rhetoric about vaccination and includes one example of this rhetoric in his piece. But it’s not just Adams and his loony tunes ‘natural health’ publication that are pushing violent rhetoric about vaccinations, there are a number of other groups that are doing this as well.
The constant calls for violence against vaccination staff, the trespass on their property and the threatening of violence that Dr Gorski reported some anti vaccination advocates as being involved in. are not in my view to be classified as freedom of speech. This is the credible and immediate threat of violence that the US Supreme Court decided was not legitimate freedom of speech and it is a point of view that I agree with the US Supreme Court on. It’s one thing, an annoying thing to be sure, to have a bunch of anti vax lunatics demonstrating on the street, but it is quite another very unacceptable thing to have them invade a pharmacy to threaten people.
Dr Gorski said:
It was reported in The Washington Post that an antivaxxer had shown up at a Walmart and warned pharmacists that administration of COVID-19 vaccines was a violation of the Nuremberg Code and could result in their execution:
An Alabama-based anti-vaxxer who has gained a following online — where he spreads false information about the coronavirus pandemic, Key was on a mission to give the pharmacists inoculating shoppers a warning.
“What they’re doing is crimes against humanity,” he said in a live stream on Facebook. “And if they do not stand down immediately, then they could be executed. They can be hung in the state.”
And:
Wearing a polo with “Vaccine Police” written across the left side of his chest, Key ran through the game plan with the group. During a prayer in the parking lot, Key said he hoped to “put the fear of God in these pharmacists.”
The live stream shows Key walking past the produce section and then along the grocery aisles. As he made his way to the pharmacy counter, workers there can be seen shutting down the counter and locking the door.
Before I continue I need to report the massive and tragic irony of an anti vax lunatic from Alabama trying to stop people from being vaccinated against Covid. In Alabama only 35% of its eligible population have been fully vaccinated against covid and therefore have a significant degree of protection from serious covid illness. Nearly all of Alabama is classified as a Covid hotspot and the State has suffered nearly 12,000 covid deaths. The relatively low take up of vaccines in Alabama when compared to countries like the United Kingdom that don’t have a highly active and high profile anti vaccination movement is very illustrative. In the UK where 76% have had two doses of a coronavirus vaccine, deaths are dropping and our economy is starting to reopen. Vaccination has given Britain an edge, medically, socially and economically. In Alabama where there is an anti vax movement that does gain adherents, deaths and infections are much higher than in the UK. In Britain although, as elsewhere in the world, we can’t bring back those who died from covid or covid related conditions, we can at last start to repair the damage that has been to the economy, mental health, physical health and to society as a whole. Low vaccination rates have put Alabama a long way behind the UK when it comes to recovery and I take absolutely no pleasure in saying that. Alabamans do not deserve to suffer as they do but they suffer in part because of the anti vax bullshit that is promulgated by the likes of the idiotic pharmacy invader.
Entering a pharmacy not with the intention of buying something but with the intention of intimidating staff with the threat of death is not, I repeat not, freedom of speech. It is a form of terroristic behaviour because it is designed to use the threat of force to gain a change in policy. The anti-vaccine loonspud in this incident is not voicing an opinion, but infringing on the rights of others who might have decided to be vaccinated. People can swing their metaphorical fists around as much as they want but when it contacts another person’s nose then that is infringing on the rights of another. I’m a free speech fundamentalist and believe that people should be able to speak their minds, even if the minds, such as they are, are filled with anti-vax shite, after all they are just words and the words of lunatics should be countered with other more sensible words until the better ideas win out.
But doing what the US anti-vax lunatics are doing is not free speech. It is invoking ‘King Mob’ and the violence that that ruler brings with him. The pharmacist and others in the supermarket pharmacy were put in fear of a mob and an out of control and deluded one at that.
Elements of the US anti vaccination world, have crossed the line from speech to violence. That can’t be condoned or explained away. Maybe it is a policy of desperation as more and more people see the value of vaccination not just for covid but for other diseases as well? I can quite readily see a scenario where the anti vaxxers know that they’ve lost the peaceful argument and have now started to engage in violence in order to get their failed ideas across. It’s quite possible, as Dr Gorski says that this is the path that anti vaccination advocates have been walking down for a decade or more and having observed the anti vaccination movement ever since the Andrew Wakefield scandal, I’ve no reason to disbelieve him. If that is the case then those parts of the anti vaccination movement that have embraced violence should be treated as a violent threat just as jihadists and domestic terrorists are. Bad ideas should be debated in the hope that good ideas drive out the bad, but when bad ideas, or rather those who promote then become so radicalised that they take up arms or use violence on a depressingly regular basis, then what we have is not debate but the sort of terroristic activity that is a legitimate interest to law enforcement.
There is no free speech where the vaccine is concerned. I’d say offhand, the overwhelming majority of people have only heard one side of the vaccine debate – that it’s perfectly safe and side effects are minor and rare. Ask the same people what’s in the vaccine, what causes the side effects, what are the longer term health implications and you will be met with blank faces. Any epidemiologist, virologist or vaccine developers who speak out against this particular vaccine are glibly labelled “antivaxxers” and deplatformed, put in the same category as “swivel eyed loons.” Some of these people are at the top of their tree but are silenced, if they are silenced, how can anyone make an informed decision, if it is not informed, how can it be said they were vaccinated by consent?
This doesn’t give license to threaten or incite mob violence but does it mean anyone’s decision not to be vaccinated should be threatened or coerced?
If you go over to various alt tech forums you will find plenty of free speech about vaccines. In fact if you want to find some of the worst fact free stuff about vaccines in general and covid vaccines in particular then there are plenty of people, including sadly some individuals I used to respect in other areas, speaking about vaccines.
In the vast majority of cases the side effects of mRNA and other covid vaccines are indeed very minor. My vaccine effects were non existent on the first dose and a day of feeling flu like symptoms on the second vaccination dose. It is almost inevitable that when there’s a mass vaccination campaign there will be a minority of people who get a serious side effect but it is nothing like the amount the scaremongers are trying to make it out to be. I was a bit reluctant to be vaccinated at first and for a while bought into the false idea that the IFR was only 0.3%. It was only later after I’d done a bit more research that I found out that I’d been had by plausible sounding mountebanks. I’m no great fan of the UK National Health Service but even I was impressed by how the vaccination staff were monitoring the tiny problem of blood clots by way of taking a much enhaced medical history of the vaccination patient than was the case when I had my first dose.
We do know what’s in the vaccine. This information has been widely published.
As regards people with medical qualifications being classed as ‘anti vaxxers’ then it helps to remember that just because someone has a medical qualification doesn’t mean that they can also be an idiot or have some sort of medical grift going on on the side.
When I was vaccinated for the first time the issue of informed consent was made very clear to me by the vaccination staff and I gave my informed consent because I’d read enough about the science behind the vaccines by those who know far more than I do. I’d certainly recommend the You Tuber Myles Power on the subject of the vaccines as he knows his stuff and also has a long and credible record for busting conspiracy theories like Chemtrails and Holocaust Denial.
I’m against coercion in order to be vaccinated but I would like to see more incentives in order to try to get those who should be vaccinated but who have fallen down the anti vax rabbit hole to be vaccinated.
For me a big part of why I changed my mind and accepted covid vaccinations was finding out that many of those pushing scare stories and bullshit about the covid vaccines were also behind pushing similar scare stories and bullshit about other vaccines.
@Marz:
there always has to be a degree of trust in the medical profession and (I’ll stand to be corrected on this) but I suspect you had a whole batch of vaccines administered as a kid.
Did you or your parents know what was in them? I doubt it very much.
Yet those vaccines quite probably saved your life, either directly by preventing infection or indirectly by herd immunity.
As to what is in the COVID vaccines; unless you really believe that all the manufacturers are lying then in fact we do know more about the what is in these vaccines than we do about many other vaccines. The companies and especially Astrazeneca have been remarkably open about just this issue over a very short time.
All medicines have side effects and risks – just read the leaflet in the next batch of aspirin or paracetemol tablets that you open. One answer to your question as to what causes the side effects is that each and every person is genetically unique and so react differently to the same medicine. This is a well known and understood phenomenon within health care and one of the drivers of “personalised medicine”.
Turning to long term risks. For any new medication there is, by definition, no information about long term risks. Thus this argument is (forgive me for saying this) a particularly stupid one. The only way we can find out the long term risks is by monitoring what happens to those who are vaccinated over the long term.
btw: ALL medicines are monitored over the long term and when a problem (or even tragedy) crops up then licences are withdrawn but, by definition, this is a long-term (up to 60 years or more) process.
Now: I do NOT agree with silencing, deplatforming etc. of those who speak out against vaccines in general. In many ways I would prefer that the “swivel eyed loons” and others get to say what they want and are then engaged by the better or equally informed and have their arguments refuted (and I use that word correctly btw) in an open setting rather than they attract the like minded in some anti-vax echo-chamber.
That said I am reminded of the fraudulent research paper authored by Andrew Wakefield in the late 1990s and published in The Lancet (1998) which claimed a link between the MMR vaccine, colitis and autism spectrum disorders. the British and other press trumpeted this and as a result MMR uptake fell with the consequence that measles and mumps epidemics resulted in several Countries claiming the lives of a number of children.
The irony is that, even if Wakefield’s false and fraudulent claims had been true, the damage done to the lives of children by not taking the vaccine was greater than those he was predicting as the “risk” of the vaccine.
In this case at least part of the problem was a failure of the peer review system of the Lancet – something that tarnished in reputation substantially.
Thus your point about informed consent has some merit and I will further agree that a number of experts have been silenced (or at least ignored) – I’m thinking here of the “Great Barrington Declaration” authors – and their treatment in the UK press which has slavishly followed the government’s line on lockdowns etc.
But I also think that the ability to make informed consent is often ill-served by a press and Broadcast industry that is (to put it politely and assume no other less honest motive) scientifically and medically illiterate (thus it is unduly swayed by both government “experts” or con-men like Wakefield).
To take an example: there has been much discussion in the press and elsewhere about the risks of blood clotting from the not for profit Astra-Zeneca vaccine and many have taken this as evidence that the vaccine is “not safe”. Yet the risks of blood clotting from the contraceptive pill are higher than for the vaccine. Are we now to ban the pill? In addition, the overall risk of blood clotting (ignoring the “at risk” group who are also the most common takers of “the pill”) is little to no higher than the general risk in the population.
Maybe I’m being cynical here, but this leads me to wonder whether or not all those speaking about this risk (which is comparable in the other vaccines) are “honest actors” or whether they are motivated by reasons other than health concerns.
Once again I would fully support their right to state their concerns, but I would also question them as to their reasons in the light of comparable risks in universally accepted medicines.
Which brings me back to a fundamental point: we have to either have a basic trust in the health-care system or a very high degree of scientific literacy in the population and I would suggest that the latter is hard to achieve .
I also agree that people have the right not to take the vaccine (there is a tough point here about the case of those who work with the particularly vulnerable, the elderly and ill, but for the moment let’s keep to the general case), BUT if they do not, they must be prepared to face the consequences of their action (or inaction) and accept the risk of severe illness from COVID or even death.
So, to give a direct answer to your final question – no, the choice should be yours and yours alone.
In my view, all people – even idiots – have the right to make their own choices, but they must also own the consequences of those choices.
“all people – even idiots – have the right to make their own choices…”
I am afraid that’s not the case in some situations in the UK.
Currently the public feel they are being forced when they should be gently coerced into having a covid jab.
And to add that you have to wonder why there was a big outcry over the MMR before people were swatted down by the powers that be.
With the Wakefield MMR scandal it wasn’t so much that people were ‘swatted down’ by the powers that be, but that Wakefield’s claims were shown to be false. There is no link between autism and MMR and a number of studies have shown this.
“There is no link between the autism and MMR and a number of studies have shown this”
Do you mean studies by government scientists?
Did anyone think to ask the parents of children that changed after having the MMR?
In your heart, why do you really think there is such a distrust in vaccinations these days – and if you say because of the anti vaxxers lies you are insulting most people who either have experience or can think for themselves.
No. Studies by various doctors and scientists from across the world. The problem is that many of the symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder show up when kids are having their later jabs or just after. It doesn’t mean that the vaccine has caused the disorder,it just is coincidence that they show up at the same time.
I think that there is a distrust of vaccination in part because we have become too comfortable with health and are the first generation to be able to do so. We’ve forgotten how bad some of these diseases are, how many children were crippled or died from diseases that we can now vaccinate against. We don’t see Polio, Diptheria, Whooping Cough or measles mumps or rubella and the horrific complications that they bring. It’s all too easy to think that these diseases have gone away but they have not. They are only kept in check by vaccination. Some distrust in medical science has also come from things like Thalidomide impinging on the public consciousness but although medical science and the regulation of it is not perfect, things are still better than they are then.
As for anti vaxxers. There’s a world of difference in my view between those who are resolutely anti vaccination and who plainly are ignoring solid medical knowledge and those who are vaccine hesitant, who may be worried about vaccines not because they are opposed to them but because they don’t understand.
I don’t think that people should be ‘coerced’ I believe that they should, if they are medically able to, voluntarily be vaccinated. I certainly think that more should be done to incentivise people but coercion, no. There are certainly some situations where mandating vaccines can be morally justified such as in nurseries where there might be older children along with babies too young to be fully vaccinated against major diseases. In that situation I can understand why a nursery might insist that older children attending said nursery are vaccinated. After all they need to protect their most vulnerable children who might be in child care at a very young age because of parental illness or similar needs. I didn’t take my child to any public playgroups or baby and parent groups until he had at least had his initial jabs. Britain tried compulsory vaccination against Smallpox in the 19th century and it failed and caused all manner of political problems and riots in some parts of the country. This is why the Vaccines Act of 1896 stated that vaccination was better done ona voluntary basis
@Hyacinth:
I’m sorry but Wakefield’s fraudulent claims have been repeatedly refuted by proper, large scale, peer reviewed analyses of outcomes from the MMR vaccine.
And no, it wasn’t “government scientists” either, but international groups of epidemiologists.
BTW: who exactly are the “government scientists”? And why are these less trustworthy than Wakefield and others who were employed by Lawyers acting for anti-Vax groups?
Personally, I’d be more suspicious of those acting for the lawyers or “activist” groups or particular industries. In this I’m reminded of the scientists working for the tobacco industry who kept falsely insisting “no link between cancer and smoking” even when the evidence was overwhelming of a causal link (small cell lung cancer if you are interested).
I certainly accept that amongst scientists there will be the immoral and venal (the tobacco industry instances and Wakefield prove this), but again this is what peer-review should largely stop (at least in reputable journals) and those with vested interests have more to gain/lose than those for whom the outcome is, essentially, a matter of indifference (as it should be).
Turning to your other point: “In your heart, why do you really think there is such a distrust in vaccinations these days – and if you say because of the anti vaxxers lies you are insulting most people who either have experience or can think for themselves.”
Let me say that I have sympathy with any parent whose child develops autism (I know such a case personally) and I do understand the need to blame something, anything for this.
I also entirely agree with F211’s comment on this, but I will add the following.
Too often today (and this applies to life in general imo) we want or need to blame somebody or something when things go wrong, we find it increasingly difficult to accept that sometimes things just go wrong and it is no-one’s fault. Putting it somewhat cynically, the response I see could be summed up as “Who do I sue?” rather than “What do I do?”
The simple fact is that it is only statistics that can tell us whether X causes Y (there are many hilarious examples online of false correlations for example) so the fact that that autism sometimes occurs after the MMR jab whilst a correlation is not a causation, as F211 states. This is something that most anti-vaxxers either do not understand or else ignore; the first is excusable, the second is not.
At the risk of repeating a point I made earlier: all medicines, vaccines etc. have risks associated with them. There is no such thing as “risk free medicine”. What one has to assess is the balance of risk.
Even if Wakefield had been right, the MMR vaccine would have still been a better option than non-vaccination. the number of lives destroyed by a resurgence of the child-killing diseases of the Victorian era would have vastly out-weighed those lost to autism (granted separate vaccines would still be available, but that is not my point).
As to your point on distrust. This clearly depends on Country and several other factors. Trust in the UK is actually pretty high, elsewhere it is lower.
I think that there are several reasons for this: firstly there has been a general decline in “trust” anyway, often, it has to be said, for pretty good reasons given political mendacity.
That this should spill over onto vaccines which are, without doubt, the greatest success story of modern medicine (of we lose the fight over antibiotics and antibiotic resistance vaccines will be the only ‘big gun’ left in our anti-disease armoury), is perverse.
F211 makes a good point about the Thalidomide tragedy, but that was a medicine (a chemical), not a vaccine; so the one should not impact on trust in the other (at least amongst people who can think for themselves).
In the UK we have seen many medical scandals linked to abominably poor care – F211 documents these – and this has obviously eroded trust in the UK’s health care system and trust in Doctors as well. That there will be spill-over from this onto vaccines is inevitable.
When the health service is repeatedly seen as a self-serving institution that covers-up and denies wrong-doing, carelessness etc., then trust in the whole system is going to erode and this will impact trust in medicines and vaccines which we take, or not, on, or against, the advice of doctors who may lack trust in many eyes.
The irony is that the administration of a vaccine (which is the only point at which the the UK’s NHS is directly involved in the vaccine program) is a very simple medical procedures (a “jab”) and one which is, in and of itself, amongst the least likely to cause any harm (I’m sure, someone, somewhere has had a needle break off in their arm, thus requiring a minor op to remove it, but even so).
Finally: I’m not sure whether to be amused or annoyed by your comment about “people who …can think for themselves”. The epidemiological studies that utterly refuted Wakefield’s fraudulent claims required a great deal of thinking (not to mention hard graft) by their authors, far more in fact than Wakefield et al ever put into their fraud of a paper.
The idea that only this group (of which one is, obviously, a member) is comprised of “thinkers” and all others are “sheep”, “gammon” or whatever is yet another sad reflection on the state of discourse today, allowing those of the “in group” to dismiss whatever is said (no matter how factually based) by the “out-group” without engagement; something that I hope you note neither F211 nor I are doing even though we clearly disagree with your position.
As F211 says: ” There’s a world of difference … between those who are resolutely anti vaccination and who plainly are ignoring solid medical knowledge and those who are vaccine hesitant, who may be worried about vaccines not because they are opposed to them but because they don’t understand.”
The former are often liars, sometimes only by omission, but liars nevertheless, the second merely ignorant.