Last week, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said the current surge in NSW infections is due to the Delta variant, not Australia’s low vaccine take-up. PM Scott Morrison agreed, pointing to the ‘nature of the Delta variant’ and the ‘lived experience’ of countries with higher vaccination rates. By contrast, during a CNN townhall event on 20 July, President Joe Biden covered all bases. Vaccines, he said, in disjointed segments will ensure you won’t get Covid; or if infected, you won’t need hospitalisation; and you won’t die. 

The initial belief in the efficacy of vaccines in breaking the links between infections, hospitalisations and deaths is being confounded as data begin to accumulate with mass vaccinations. The most embarrassing evidence of Biden’s mistake on the first claim is the Texas Democrats who fled to Washington to deny the state legislature a quorum to enact voter reform laws and held highly-publicised meetings with party counterparts in Congress and Vice President Kamala Harris. Despite all being vaccinated, several got infected and cross-infected people they met in DC. 

At a press briefing on 16 July, referencing CDC director Rochelle Walensky’s statement that Covid had become the ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said: ‘99.5 percent of people who are in the hospital are people who are unvaccinated’. This does not seem credible. If true, the startling claim would put the US on a unique pedestal, showing an efficacy rate well above the claims even of the vaccine manufacturers, which in itself would be a world first – Big Pharma under-claiming.  

In England, some confusing data seem to suggest 62 per cent of hospitalisations for the unvaccinated (Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance had to correct an earlier mistake that attributed 60% of Covid hospitalisations to the doule-jabbed), but 63 per cent of deaths among the vaccinated. Fresh data from Israel for the Pfizer vaccine show efficacy rates against symptomatic illness falling to 41%, and for AstraZeneca in the UK down to 1.5% against infections and 60% against serious illness, from the initial rate of over 90% for both vaccines. The likely explanation is that unlike immunity through natural infection, vaccines do not give mucosal immunity. But it’s still 90%+ effective in preventing serious illness. This will lock us into permanent dependency on booster shots.  

Malta reached 50% fully vaccinated on 2 June and 75% on 2 July. This has not been enough to avoid a surge in cases and hospitalisations, although deaths have remained flat. 

With 50% full vaccination on 24 June (and 74% on 15 July), Iceland lifted domestic and border restrictions on 26 June/1 July but has seen an exponential surge in infections, despite being an isolated island. It recorded 78 new infections, including 52 among the fully-vaccinated, on 21 July. Two further comments on Iceland. Figure 2 shows the gradient of the current surge is as steep as the first two waves last year without vaccines; and, had they been available last year, its advocates would no doubt have credited the steep fall to vaccines. 

A headline in Scotland’s Herald newspaper on 21 July said: ‘Covid hospital admissions triple in over-60s — and nearly half of patients fully vaccinated’. Meanwhile, the weekly all-cause excess mortality in Scotland in mid-July rose to 100, of whom only 38 died with Covid. Scotland’s infection, hospitalisation and mortality curves are closely matched for the over-60s (the most vulnerable group). The vaccines are not preventing infection, serious illness or deaths; the modest fall in the mortality metric is likely attributable to the Delta variant being less lethal if more infectious and to better treatment protocols by now. As The Sunday Times notes, ‘the collateral damage of two national lockdowns’ has also begun ‘to emerge across Scotland’. 

Source: Daily Sceptic, 23 July 2021. 

Meanwhile, Sweden was only 30% fully vaccinated on 25 June and 39% on 22 July. Yet since 30 June, daily new cases have flatlined at between 250-350 and deaths at two or less with no lockdowns, schools and businesses open and masks not even recommended. In sharp contrast to European neighbours preparing for further lockdowns, Sweden is welcoming tourists. 

On the harms side of the equation, Dr Sebastian Rushworth notes, referencing a Lancet article, that patients in the real world experience serious side-effects from drugs four-five times more than reported in trial results from the manufacturers(Covid vaccines were not involved in this study). Rebecca Weisser once again provided a handy summary of adverse reactions to Covid vaccines. The eminent Dr Peter McCullough, in a TV interview with France Soir on 28 June, pointed out that the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) normally records about 25 deaths per year from all vaccines. During the Covid pandemic, he said, up to 11 June it had verified 5,993 deaths, 20,737 hospitalisations, 47,837 urgent care visits, 1,538 anaphylaxis cases, and 1,868 cases of Bells Palsy. Because VAERS is a passive-surveillance system, the general consensus is the numbers are vastly under-reported. McCullough goes on to say this is ‘a major safety signal … that has exceeded all boundaries of acceptability’. Quizzed on the causal link to vaccines, he answered: ‘it’s biologically plausible, temporally associated, internally consistent month by month’ and also ‘externally consistent’ with data from the US, Europe and England. ‘The vaccine is in the causal pathway to death … The majority of these 6,000 Americans, they were healthy enough to walk into a vaccine centre and within 2-4 days they’re dead’. 

How are the Covidians responding to the growing body of evidence about the relatively weak efficacy of vaccines? Essentially, they are doubling down. On 15 July, the University of California published its ‘final policy’ on vaccination policy. ‘To maintain the health and well-being of the campus community and that of the general public’, it says, all employees and students will be required to provide proof of full vaccination ‘as a condition of their physical access UC facilities, as well as in-person participation in UC programs that may occur off-site’. Chillingly, the document adds: ‘This is a permanent policy. Infectious disease experts anticipate that annual or more frequent boosters will be necessary’. 

There we have it. Abandon all hope, all ye who seek to enter the Dystopia of the Brave New World in which the Cult of Covidians shall reign supreme and children will be ritually sacrificed on the altar.  

Covid vaccines were given emergency use authorisation before safety trials have been completed. Because this can only be done under provisions that are contingent on the lack of available treatments, discussion of promising options like ivermectin has been closed down by state fiat. There’s silence about naturally acquired immunity that is likely more robust and durable and offers better protection against mutant variants. The vaccine leviathan is all set to ride roughshod over existing principles of medical ethics in embracing coercive instruments that violate bodily integrity. Yet the evidence for the long-term efficacy of vaccines grows weaker even as reports of harmful side-effects continue to mount. The success of vaccines in breaking the link between infections and severe illness and deaths offers a strong reason for the elderly and vulnerable to get vaccinated. But governments would help by returning the locus of decisions to individuals in consultation with their GP, including choice of vaccine.  

The clear link between vaccines and infections undermines the entire basis of Australia’s strategy which has been driven by a monomaniacal focus on eliminating infections. The failure of vaccines to achieve sterile immunity against infection and transmissibility demolishes the argument for digital vaccine certificates as a condition of entry to common venues.