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Someone suggested last week that my lack of medical degrees or appropriate academic credentials invalidates my opinion on Covid-19, ranking me behind the experts. An interesting observation.
It is true that I am medically and scientifically unqualified to comment on Covid-19 but equally, I am entitled to hold an opinion. Most of us have access to the latest data on the disease, vaccine and treatments and The BFD provides a platform for public debate unavailable on much social media which censors dissent.
Public discussion is an essential element of democracy. When media don’t ask the experts obvious and pertinent questions are we supposed to shut up and roll over?
An argument must stand on its own merit, respecting the credentials of trusted experts, but a debate is won on merit, regardless of who voices the winning argument.
An expert relying on credentials to convince the public is the very worst advisor. Media talk up expert credentials and give licence to obfuscation and part-truths, superseded in the rapidly evolving overseas science of Covid-19. Naysayers don’t get a look in, we are dubbed dangerous and anti-vaxxers, spurred on by a terrified, gullible public.
My opinion, and yours, are important. If you don’t think this is true you have abandoned your democratic rights. If you disagree with the experts and don’t exercise your right to free speech you have abandoned democracy.
I have the right to make my own decision about receiving the vaccine and the right to voice it.
If we are forbidden to challenge government strategy and instructed to obey without question, we effectively licence an authoritarian government, possibly a dictatorship.
Some people don’t care that the government makes health decisions on their behalf, some openly welcome it. I am not one of them.
Our Covid-19 experts are my constant source of disappointment in a fast-developing science; they are either not up to date or ignore overseas developments.
“Public health officials have advised the Government that New Zealand is likely to have a Covid-19 outbreak similar to New South Wales in the coming months. If that happens, the Covid-19 Response Minister, Chris Hipkins says we’re in for a swift and severe level four lockdown. He says the Government is watching Australia’s experience with the highly infectious Delta variant closely and learning.”
RNZ
After 18 months, our government can’t come up with anything more than repeating an invasive and destructive strategy using threats.
“Just like after 9/11, the border will never be the same after Covid … things can change, but that doesn’t mean we can’t adapt to them in a way that eventually feels normal again.”
Jacinda Ardern promising a future of mandatory vaccination & closed borders
Putting pressure on people to vaccinate using scare tactics and threats is bad practice and, regrettably, the NZ experience.
If leading public health physician Michael Baker is aware of developments in Covid-19 treatments, he has not addressed them publicly. Australia and Israel are working on new treatments, and anyone reading The BFD will be aware of existing treatments, well outside their patents, that may reduce the severity of infection and likelihood of death.
I am curious about the reasons for the government’s reluctance to consider Covid treatment plans using the various existing drugs used to treat Covid-19 overseas and available here, and their silence on the subject makes me nervous. BFD writer Lushington Brady asks why the Australian government is not utilising their own advances to fight the disease.
There is much missing information: we don’t know the long-term efficacy against Covid variants; we don’t know the vaccine effectiveness within age groups (with differing risk factors) and we certainly don’t know the long-term adverse reactions within high-risk groups.
How can anyone make an informed decision about either efficacy or safety when they don’t know how effective the vaccine is against variants, how long it is effective, or the risk factors relating to their own age and health?
Pressure has been put on us to take the vaccine because it will benefit all New Zealanders. Jab for the greater good, we were told and many gratefully did so, albeit to appease their government-induced state of fear.
The media lie when they write people like me off as anti-vaxxers. I am vaccinated and my children are too. I do not believe herbal pill-popping alternative therapy will cure Covid, although I take vitamin supplements and use some alternative health therapies.
When our family gets sick the local health centre is the first port of call because we trust the doctors and staff to deliver the best possible health outcomes. They practice preventative medicine by regularly testing and advising on individual health risks and we trust their guidance.
The vaccine was distributed at a national level and did not initially engage local health providers, who were not asked to administer the vaccine. Why not? Was there a disconnect between the national view and the local view? Were doctors divided over the vaccination issue and afraid to speak out? We don’t know because there was no public debate, dissenters were forced underground.
This is not good stewardship and it affected my vaccination decision as did the government’s scare tactics, lack of transparency and my own family health experiences.
In the 1970s a close family member was repeatedly given shock treatment without anaesthetic because it was the recommended treatment for depression at the time.
“Much of the stigma attached to ECT is based on early treatments in which high doses of electricity were administered without anesthesia, leading to memory loss, fractured bones and other serious side effects.
ECT is much safer today. Although ECT may still cause some side effects, it now uses electric currents given in a controlled setting to achieve the most benefit with the fewest possible risks.”
Mayo Clinic
Shock treatment is still used today under restrained circumstances and the takeaway is that everyone learns from new experiences, including the medical profession.
Doctors back in the day, carried out best practice at the time, but the cautionary tale is that some doubt did exist about the risk of personal injury from this new treatment. In hindsight, we should have waited until more was known about the degree of personal injury.
I have another close family member diagnosed with an “idiopathic” (of unknown origin) autoimmune condition where the immune system suddenly goes awry and embarks on a seek and destroy mission to annihilate healthy cells.
The specialist initially assigned the case used scare tactics to force our permission for an irreversible surgical procedure that would certainly compromise an already malfunctioning immune system. The expected long-term success rate was 50%-70% and the specialist painted a dire picture of life without the recommended surgery. We rejected this advice and demanded a referral for another specialist, resulting in better guidance for a bewildered family working through a life-changing event. We were offered an alternative non-surgical treatment plan that worked, despite being relatively new at the time.
The takeaway from this experience is that not all doctors are created equal, and neither are all treatments. The decision is always ours to make after considering the advice of experts we trust, noting the risk of specialists on a mission to prove a point may conflict with our health needs.
I am sceptical of the health decisions made by the Ministry of Health regarding Covid-19 based on my personal experience and the government’s heavy-handed approach, including refusing to publicly engage or evaluate treatments, the media’s prolonged use of fear tactics, the experimental nature of the vaccines and the overseas vaccine data only now beginning to trickle through indicating lower efficacy rates than the promised 95%.
On balance, the bigger threat is the loss of democratic freedoms and the censorship of dissenters as the government creates a second class, unvaccinated citizenship.
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