Are we really protected against the Corona Virus?

Canada is the only country in the world that experiments with vaccinating its population, under the guise of a vaccine shortage. We supposedly have a shortage because we did not have the foresight, even during a pandemic, to build a home grown facility for the manufacture of vaccines, unlike other countries such as the United Kingdom who went from zero to full production in just over 7 months. Now, we must compete with every other country in the world for what table scraps we can get, and who knows what we ended up paying for them? These figures have never been disclosed.

The made-in-Canada shortage gave way to the “great population experiment”, which delayed second doses of vaccines by up to four months, instead of the recommended three weeks by the manufacturer. Our federal health regulators have been adhering to local advice generated by the medical profession and have no inkling that the type of qualification required to develop a vaccine is quite different and requires skills in bioscience and genetic engineering. The medical profession has always been governed by the two mantra, one is to do no harm, the second is to do what works. Treatments are based on known time-honoured remedies that work, new remedies and drugs are approached extremely cautiously, requiring gathering of field data and many hours of analysis to determine whether they will be effective or not. The most common yardstick is to divide a test group in two, one half is given the test drug, the other a placebo. If there is a marked improvement in the first group, then there is some hope that the drug will work, complications notwithstanding.

Pfizer BioNtech has developed what is probably the most successful vaccine so far for protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, based on a new technology know as mRNA. This technology teaches the bodies’ immune system to recognize the virus and to defend itself against it, rather than develop anti-bodies to it, which is the conventional approach, and is not as effective. Granted the timeline was short and maybe not all avenues were pursued in terms of dosage and timing, but the hard data showed that two doses were required, the first to build the immunity, and a second booster shot three weeks later to take it to its full effectiveness.

Data was submitted by Pfizer to the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the US for approval, based on this dosage regimen. The US has adopted it to roll out its vaccination program, stating that “we will do what we know” and if one were to view a map of the density of cases prior to the rollout and now, a significant drop has taken place.

Canada, on the other hand, chose to re-interpret this data stating that the efficacy result in the first three week period was incorrect, as it takes at least two of those weeks for immunity to build. Therefore, there was only one week of data collected when those who received the shot were fully immune, and the claim was that the efficacy of the vaccine was significantly higher at this point in time.

Now starts the experiment. Mixing politics and science is about as effective as oil and water, but to save face for the politicians it was decided that delaying the second dose would enable what scarce vaccine there was to be more widely distributed, ending up in a more immune population. However, no other country in the world has taken this approach, so there is no data to support that this would yield any benefit, in addition, there is also no data available on how the first dose degrades over time. So, if a significant delay were to be introduced, would the later second does yield the same efficacy as was done in the original trial? Hello lab rats.

To make matters worse, neither the developers of the vaccine nor the CDC was consulted about this new interpretation of the data, and not two months later the politically appointed vaccination advisory council, who by their own admission only meets a few times a year, suddenly reversed course on its recommendation to wait for the second dose, now chanting to get it as soon as possible. This casts a large shadow on the validity of their original recommendation.

Back in the do what works department, a claim can be made that a significant drop in cases has also occurred locally, but is that attributable to the percentage of the population that has been vaccinated, which in my area currently sits at around 65% for a first dose, or because of better enforcement of public health measures, closure of gathering places and schools, social distancing, and the mandatory use of masks in public?

The only parallel that can be drawn upon is a previous pandemic, and the best example is the 1918-19 Spanish Influenza pandemic. In that era genetic engineering was probably nothing more than science fiction, and the prevailing preventative measures were exactly the same as now, social distancing, limitation of contact and the mandatory use of masks. And it was defeated.

To defend the use of vaccines, the outbreak of Polio myelitis in the 1950’s was finally brought under control by the Salk vaccine, but it only affected the younger population, ergo it was not considered a pandemic. It is still around today due to misinformation about the safety of the vaccination that has been promulgated by social media, the blight of the modern era of communication, cesspool of verbal diarrhea and breeding ground for misinformation, conspiracy theories, scams, and revolts.

Given that the amount of misinformation floating around in cyberspace will deter a percentage of the population from even getting a vaccination, and those with legitimate medical concerns such as allergies to the added ingredients used as growth media and carriers, we can never really achieve a rate of 100%. However, if enough of us get vaccinated to reduce the reproduction rate to a low enough level that the number of new infections can drop to virtually zero, then we more or less have this bug under control.

As with polio, pertussis, rubella, and a host of other diseases which can be controlled, the Corona virus will become yet another in this mix that will raise its ugly head again and again. These maladies cannot be considered to be eradicated by any stretch of the imagination, but continuing to be vaccinated as children, with boosters as required well into adulthood, and annual inoculations for the disease du jour will keep a lid on most of it. Stir the new kid on the block into the mix, and now we are compelled to be vaccinated annually for all of the above – until the next bug strikes.