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My highest educational qualification is an MA in Sociology. I did not study science beyond Class 10. This I write, because what I intend to deal with here is a matter that someone trained in science might be better equipped to do. Since there are gaps in our public discourse on the need for the vaccine to contain the coronavirus pandemic, I intend to leap right in. Stay with me if you have the patience to hear out a non-expert.
“If you are not your own doctor, you are a fool”, said Hippocrates.
The World Health Organization this year changed the definition of “herd immunity”. From this year, herd immunity can only be achieved through vaccinating the global population. Earlier definitions took into account immunity developed through previous infection too.
This definition is now the reigning discourse – it is accepted that we can never “return to normal” – a world without masks, where businesses were not shut down to contain virus spread – without having the global population vaccinated, as billionaire Bill Gates explained.
There are, however, doctors holding out against vaccination. Dr Shanakara Chetty in South Africa said he had been treating patients of SARS Cov 2, and what was important was to intervene early – patients were educated about what they might expect, the eighth day after infection, and to alert him if they suspected the symptoms were getting worse. Ivermectin, the anti-parasitic drug that has been in use since the 1980s, is among the drugs he prescribed. “It is not the silver bullet,” he said, adding that he used it in combination with other drugs.
Asked whether he would recommend vaccination, Dr Chetty responded that he had not had a single case of death among the patients he had treated, and a high rate of cure. Given that, and given the risks of the vaccine, he did not think it was necessary to vaccinate patients.
World Health Organization has recommended against the use of Ivermectin, although some doctors are puzzling over the reasons offered for this suggestion. Dr Tess Lawrie, who has worked towards producing evidence that WHO uses to make its recommendations, is unable to understand this decision. A study from All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar had found that Ivermectin was effective as prophylaxis. The Hindu reported recently that in India, despite the WHO recommendations, doctors continue to rely on their own wisdom and experience to prescribe Ivermectin.
Given that the mainstream media does not cover success in treating the condition, it may be pertinent to point also to the presentation by an Ayurvedic doctor in Chennai, who explained that she had treated several patients with serious other medical conditions, that could be considered “co-morbidities” – she too had managed to cure her patients, through Ayurvedic remedies. Dr PLT Girija, in the discussion after her presentation, also talked about how she would not take the vaccine herself, though she would leave it to her patients to decide if they needed to take it. As a preventive, she recommends decoction of the herb giloy.
When it appears that there are indeed treatment options, why is vaccination still held out as the only option? Emergency use authorization – under which the vaccines are currently being used – is only legally valid when there is no treatment protocol in place. Could this be why doctors who present evidence of the condition being treatable are finding their voices suppressed?
Quite apart from the suppression of treatment options, there is also the suppression of reports of adverse effects from the vaccine. By early May 2021, there were nearly two lakh adverse events reported officially in the United States, and over 4,000 deaths. In India, one Twitter handle, c400T, has been compiling all reports of post-vaccination death reported in the media. There is now a documentation of over 1000 deaths; in one village in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, 25 people died in one month – a vaccination camp had been held in the village for those over 45.
There are scientists raising concerns about the vaccination process itself setting off fresh medical problems.
“Unwitting citizens must not be used as guinea pigs,” states one petition that is currently collecting signatures from around the world to oppose mandatory Covid-19 vaccination. The government must not be allowed to take this decision, the petition argues.
The media too has been constrained, and people questioning the reigning paradigm have found their voices stifled. Even Dr Thomas Campbell, who has been releasing videos based on research findings, has found some of his material removed from YouTube. Meanwhile, Pfizer has found that this vaccine is its most lucrative product – it has earned US$3.5 billion from it in revenue in the first three months of 2021. Profits, the firm indicated, could be in the 20% range. All vaccine manufacturers have billions riding on this product; since some countries have refused to use certain vaccines, there are now excess stocks that are likely to be dumped on poorer nations like India.
We got reason to be worried.
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*Freelance journalist based in Pune
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