Published at NewCatallaxy blog on 20th September, 2021.
Who knew the term “non-sterilising vaccine” six months ago? If you did not, you are in plentiful company. Maybe the woke young, who know everything, knew about it, but for oldies like me, a vaccine was a vaccine was a vaccine. It protected you from the thing you were vaccinated against, and because you couldn’t catch it, you couldn’t pass it on.
That’s old fashioned. The CDC definition of terms includes [my emphases]:
Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.
Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.
These definition were introduced by the CDC…let me see… “Page last reviewed: September 1, 2021”…weeks ago. Before then, the definitions were (26th August, 2021; page last reviewed: May 16, 2018):
Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.
Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.
Science moves so fast.
The hey-day of vaccines was the 50s and 60s, and the stars of the show were smallpox and polio vaccines. Both diseases are caused by viruses, and, like the common cold, measles and herpes, those viruses are particular to humans – they have no other hosts. That characteristic makes it possible, even if not practical, to eliminate the disease.
Some years ago, the WHO announced the death of smallpox. (It wasn’t quite dead, but it was on life support in labs about the place, just in case, heaven forbid, some other rogue state decides to use its lab supply to produce biological weapons.) But to eliminate a virus, you have to have a sterilising vaccine; or, in terms most people understand, one that works.
Think of it this way. There are measures you can take to prevent disease; for example, a healthy diet and plenty of exercise, along with plenty of sunlight to top up your Vitamin D levels. These are prophylactic measures, but they’re non-sterilising prophylaxis. You can still get crook. It’s just that, compared to an obese person, or a person suffering from some immunodeficiency, or a person with a heart ailment, you have much less chance of catching whatever disease happens to be doing the rounds. If you do get sick, though, and you have good medical treatment available to you, you come under a therapeutic regime in the care of your doctor and, if it’s severe enough, hospital staff. The purpose of the therapies is to reduce the severity of the disease. The therapy may be non-sterilising (addressing the symptoms only) or, thanks to modern medical advances, sterilising (as penicillin was initially.) These are unexceptional health-care measures (though particular therapies will vary greatly in effectiveness), and the same general principles have applied for millennia before the advent of vaccines. In the case of prophylaxis and the ameliorating of symptoms, the aim is to reduce the likelihood of contracting disease, and, should that fail, to reduce the severity of the disease.
The story we are now hearing about the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is that they do just this, and only this. But that was not always the story.
When SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were first touted, soon after our international border was closed, they were to be the definitive solution to Covid-19, eliminating all concerns about the virus and allowing us to get back to “normal.” That story is still essentially the public version of vaccine reality, as promoted ceaselessly by the media, Chief Medical Officers and Ministers of the Crown. But, quietly, the notion of getting back to normal has been nudged, prodded and shouldered off the stage. Normal has become new normal, a horse of a different colour. New normal starts with vaccinations, but somehow masks are here to stay, along with anti-social distancing, perspex shields and lines on the floor in shops and supermarkets, QR codes at every doorway, and a general level of hostility and suspicion.
The cracks in the foundations began with the surge of adverse events, as reported by VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, in the U.S., and the Yellow Card system in the U.K. Nobody believes that these systems are accurate reflections of the actual numbers of such events. All agree that these are under-reported, but no-one knows by how much.
The Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) from the U.S. FDA for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was issued in December of 2020, for persons older than 15 and older than 17, respectively. In May of 2021, the Pfizer EUA was extended to adolescents 12 to 15 years of age. In the same month, the CDC recommended that children from 12 years old should have the vaccine. At the time, the CDC’s own best estimate of Infection Mortality Rate for the 0-19 years age group was 3 per 100,000 infected; 0.003%.
At the end of June 2021 that the FDA added a myocarditis warning to the vaccine fact sheets. Studies noted that the risk was greatest in younger males.
While this was happening, it was gradually becoming obvious that vaccinated people were getting sick, and vaccinated people were dying. Obvious, that is, unless you were getting your information from the nightly news. If it were to turn out that similar numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated were becoming ill and were dying, what would happen to the vaccine push? Fortunately for politicians and drug companies, scientists determined that the vaccinated people were much less likely to become ill, and much less likely to die. Sighs of relief all round. That in spite of, for example, a study of an outbreak in Barnstable County Massachusetts, which found that 74% of those who tested positive were fully vaccinated. Only five of those required hospitalisation, but four of them were fully vaccinated.
So what do these vaccines actually do, or more precisely, what do they not do, as opposed to what we were told they would do? They are to some yet-to-be-determined extent, prophylactic. The deeply-ingrained acceptance of vaccination, in general, in Australia arises from their original promise: effectively complete prophylaxis. We didn’t take earlier vaccines in order to make our bout of smallpox or polio less dangerous to some uncertain extent. When the Covid-19 vaccines were introduced, no-one who was hectoring us to take them was saying that we would still get infected, would still pass the virus on, would still get sick, but not as badly, and would still die, but not as many of us.
Yet that is the reality, and the new story was brought centre-stage without a blush or a hint that it was a brand-new narrative. Nothing to see here, folks. Are we so used to being lied to?
How, then, does the vaccine differ from any other protocols of incompletely effective prophylactic measures and possibly incompletely effective therapy if the disease is contracted? It differs in this; that the vaccine is a threat to your health and your life.
If there are protocols of proven effectiveness in prevention and treatment of Covid-19, and there is an abundance of evidence to suggest that this is the case, then those who suppressed such protocols are culpable for a considerable measure of the suffering, debility and death that has been wrought by Covid-19. They are also culpable for every sickness, debility and death from the vaccine.
If I am denied accurate and complete information about the risks of the vaccine, including appraisals of rushed vaccine roll-outs in the past, or about the availability of alternatives, I am denied the possibility of informed consent. That is a denial of one of my most basic human rights in a supposedly free society.
Active, ceaseless, recalcitrant suppression is the hallmark of our political “leaders,” CMOs, legacy media and especially social media. The medical profession has largely cowered in silence, when they have not actively been part of the suppression and the touting for the vaccines. If the protocols are shown to be effective, all of these people have blood on their hands.
It’s not up some some lesser crested cockatoo on TV, or the CMO of the Administrative State, or the Prime Minister, to decide what risks I take with my life and health. Were I a serf, that decision would rest with the Lord of the Manor. If the elites lording it over us think that they can take those decisions for us, it makes crystal clear what their view of us plebs is. But I insist that I am a citizen, and I insist on making those decisions about myself for myself, and I insist on the information I need to make that decision.
There is a crucial difference between the risks I run from SARS-CoV-2 and the risks I run from a vaccine. I can minimise the risks I run from the virus. I know enough about its habits and its preferences to adjust my behaviour to try to avoid it. I can take advantage of the now commonplace changes to workplaces and spaces. I can take advantage of online orders and contactless pickup. Or I can take my chances in shops and malls. Most importantly of all, I could, until last Friday, find a GP who will offer me the best alternative prophylactic and, should I become infected, therapeutic protocols that have been determined by his colleagues around the world.
But there is nothing I can do to neutralise the risks of the vaccine; except refuse to take it.
As a postscript, I acknowledge Alex Berenson, whose Substack post wended its way to me and alerted me to the change in the CDC definitions. He also pointed out that the so-called vaccine is in fact a therapy.