TINA Turned
Raging Cognitive Dissonance Busts the Vaccine Saviour Gospel
History is full of beliefs that turned out to be 100% false, despite their prevailing narratives being untouchable shibboleths at the time. Those that spoke out could expect severe punishment – and many a heretic has suffered a fiery end, despite being on the right side of history. Throughout such episodes, many nice people put aside raging cognitive dissonance and clung – firmly, though incorrectly – to their belief systems.
A current prevailing belief system of our times is the ‘Covid Vaccine Saviour’ narrative. While I was a sceptic from the start, it would be fair to say that I was in a minority on this matter. It is still not entirely clear to me how the Saviour narrative established itself, or how it survived as long as it did. A generic (and not necessarily incorrect) positive predisposition towards the principle of vaccination (in the right circumstances, of course, and with appropriate safeguards in place) morphed seamlessly into a Covid Vaccine TINA (There Is No Alternative) gospel. To disagree was heresy. And there have been various attempts to eliminate heretics, along with their creed.
This is all the more surprising, given that respected commentary around the end of 2020 was sanguine and balanced. Nature, the number one science publication, reported on 3 December 2020:
“…none [of the jabs] has demonstrated that it prevents infection altogether, or reduces the spread of the virus in a population. This leaves open the chance that those who are vaccinated could remain susceptible to asymptomatic infection — and could transmit that infection to others who remain vulnerable. “In the worst-case scenario, you have people walking around feeling fine, but shedding virus everywhere,” says virologist Stephen Griffin at the University of Leeds, UK”.
Well. Plenty to unpack there, we’ll come back to it (or check out this quick Marek’s Disease / Leaky Vaccine detour if you want to skip to the worst-case scenario). Hold that thought while we pull a few more useful nuggets out of the same article:
There is no quick way to determine how long immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus will last, and researchers will need to monitor this closely in the coming months and years… Some viruses, such as the wily influenza virus, are notorious for mutating and moving bits of their genomes around… But mass vaccination campaigns will, for the first time, put enormous pressure on SARS-CoV-2 to adapt, and will select for any strain of the virus that might be able to escape immune defences.
… The MHRA’s assurance that the vaccine is safe is based on monitoring hundreds of participants for at least two months after their second dose. There are rarely serious complications after that point”.
… But after a vaccine is approved, whether fully or only for emergency use, clinicians are expected to continue reporting any adverse reactions. Many countries have some kind of programme, such as the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, that collects reports of serious symptoms after people receive a vaccine. US doctors are legally bound to report such symptoms. For COVID-19 drugs and vaccines, the United Kingdom has set up a specialized Coronavirus Yellow Card reporting site.
So far; so cautious; so sensible, and is in congruence with the official party line as per the autumn of 2020:
“People keep talking about ‘time to vaccinate the whole population’, but that is misguided,” she said. “There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable”.
… the fact that many British people believed a vaccine would be taken by the entire population pointed to a lack of clarity in government messaging about what the public could expect.
As for what happened next, this is not the place to decide whether it was bad faith, incompetence or a criminal conspiracy. There is a saying that it “takes a leap of faith to believe”, and over the course of a very few weeks, a large proportion of the Western world went on to make a leap of gargantuan proportions:
“The 'magic' has started: early data shows Israel's vaccination campaign is working”… Professor Eran Segal, a computer scientist at the Weizmann Institute, said: “We say with caution, the magic has started”.
But what shade of magic? White… or Black? When historians pore over this historical epoch, it will not be the only time a computer modeller’s statements – whether or not made with (or under?) caution – are taken with more than a pinch of salt.
Wiser brains than me were quick to point out the issue (and were duly silenced for their troubles) – truth be told it was hard to speak freely at this time. My family Christmas letter in December 2020 included the line “And it is beyond me how a vaccine that has no demonstrable impact on transmission is going to ‘save’ us from this tank trap we have dug ourselves”, and I challenged the Vaccine Saviour narrative on 4 January 2021 (Why are we not thinking rationally?). But it was to be several months before I was able to convince an editor to wave some warning flags, and this is how I summarised matters in May 2021:
The much-vaunted “vaccine effect” in early 2021 celebrated by the UK media is not as unambiguous as it should be. One would expect the divergence of cases/admissions/deaths for vaccinated age groups to be in that order, but instead was the other way round: consistent with what one might have seen in a naturally ending epidemic. Then there is the unexplained phenomenon of increases in Covid-19 cases post-vaccination.
Yet the jabbernaught rolled on, despite it being well known that a leaky vaccine can cause big problems. The authorities wrote about it. But the talking heads were unequivocal:
“Our data from the CDC suggests that vaccinated people don’t carry the virus, don’t get sick and that it’s not just in clinical trials, but it’s also in real world data”; CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, April 2021
“Vaccinated people become ‘dead ends’ for the coronavirus”; Tony Fauci, May 2021
“You’re not going to get Covid if you get these vaccinations”: President Joe Biden, July 2021
All this was parroted by media outlets. Why were questioning voices howled down? Was it because there was, in fact, no way to justify the leap of faith?
Incidentally, the truth was out there. Though I suspect he is unfortunately rather incidental to proceedings, the Prime Minister of the UK stated in October 2021 that “It doesn’t protect you from catching the disease and doesn’t protect you against passing it on” (thus totally torpedoing the case for vaccine mandates, which his government nevertheless proceeded with – it is an absolute disgrace that unvaccinated care home workers lost their jobs and the threat of summary dismissal of over 100,000+ healthcare workers in the NHS went right to the wire before today’s not entirely unpredictable reverse ferret).
So where are we now? Well, Omicron came and gave pretty much everyone a nasty cold, but was nonetheless used to terrorise the masses into getting a booster. This despite the Pfizer CEO admitting that the current injection (designed to act against the Wuhan strain) “offers very limited protection, if any” against Omicron and doesn’t “have the safety profile that we hoped we can achieve with this technology”. Perhaps all along they just wanted a reason to practice the implementation of Orwellian movement licences? Though vaccine passports have been ‘scrapped’, you can bet your bottom dollar the software infrastructure is merely on ice for a possible ‘next time’.
All this would just be fun and games were it not for the fact that this is deadly serious. If the vaccine rollout had been a vainglorious success, you would expect to see that 2021 all-cause mortality in highly vaccinated countries would be in better shape than 2020. The results are… mixed. As for those unreachable places not ‘refreshed’ by the vaccine? Well, not looking too shabby.
Oh.
As I suggested might happen back in December 2020, these injections have not got us out of the tank trap. Just think how different things might have been if we had chosen a different path. And let us hope that those people’s immune systems recover from the double whammy of Covid & Jabs. We seem to have poured fuel on the fire.
Where do we go from here? I am not entirely sure. This piece has already blown its word budget, so time to hit pause before looking ahead to the future.
#KeepOnTrucking
#LetsGoBrandon
PS. There are other places you can look for healthy (!) commentary. In fact, rather hilariously (if it were not so sinister), the Guardian (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) published an attempted hit piece to put pressure on Substack for hosting ‘vaccine sceptic writers’ (but of course the headline neatly segues to ‘anti-vaxxers’). All things considered, may I suggest that the Guardian is a highly reliable contra-indicator. Over and above the Guradian’s Featured Five to be Feared (Mercola, Berenson, Kirsch, Malone & Eugyppius), I can recommend adding the additional Substackers to your list:
The Bad Cat;
Jordan Schachtel’s Dossier;
Joel Smalley’s Metatron;
Marc Giradot’s Covid Myth Buster;
The Ethical Skeptic; and
And – of course – the effervescent Daily Sceptic and the loveable nerds at HART (Health Advisory and Research Group). There are of course more – too many to mention, too many to read. Joe Rogan, Fat Emperor, Neil Oliver…
Do I agree with all of them, and everything they say? Of course not. But it is refreshing to read around the subject and not be subject to the Trusted News Initiative, which they should just have called Newspeak. I mean, fancy using data from 2014 to attempt to normalise a worrying medical trend that has only manifested itself from the middle of 2021?
Hope Substack resists the fury that may come their way.