Ministers urged not to ‘threaten’ NHS staff over mandatory Covid jab (England)

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trophywench said:
An innate responsibility towards other people ...... I thought but obviously incorrectly this was a human trait
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In some people yes. In others, not so much.
There are plenty of people out there who don't care about others and have neither a right nor responsibility to do so. As long as they're not doing anyone any harm there should be no issue.
 
Amity Island said:
Not necessarily "all", see letter below

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its a fair point - but difficult to assess the risk.

Wish the MHRA would publish the findings in the context of other vaccine programs - is it more or less risky than flu jab, tetanus etc which are taken by many without second thought and certainly without the level of scrutiny they feel they can make on the covid vaccines.

Having this data would enable us to more broadly classify them as nutcases or not!

It does get under my skin though that we have a bunch of amateur scientists and medical wannabes and people cannot just trust the systems and experts that are there to make the informed decision on our behalf. That group of people - the great masses of educated purely by facebook conspiracy theorists are complete nutcases
 
BlueArmy said:
It does get under my skin though that we have a bunch of amateur scientists and medical wannabes and people cannot just trust the systems and experts that are there to make the informed decision on our behalf. That group of people - the great masses of educated purely by facebook conspiracy theorists are complete nutcases
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In fairness, our professional medical and scientific experts have shown themselves to be unscrupulous, untrustworthy and unethical over many decades and countless issues.
Conspiracy theorists are batshit crazy but they have been handed plenty of material to work with.
 
can’t argue that. The only glimmer of hope that maintains my faith is that the processes flush it out eventually and you’d hope it was highly rare!
 
BlueArmy said:
can’t argue that. The only glimmer of hope that maintains my faith is that the processes flush it out eventually and you’d hope it was highly rare!
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Depressingly, it's not rare at all.
The systems designed to prevent problems don't always work either.

You saw the discussion over the surgeon who decided to brand his patients with his initials.
That man should be sitting in jail right now but not only is he walkinhg the streets, the authorities designed to stop such people have said he can continue to work as a surgeon. The message is clear - if you are sufficiently talented you can get away with almost anything. If you are sufficiently well connected, you can also get away with almost anything.

No field escapes this.
 
Amity Island said:
What is your point about the concerns raised in that letter?
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I think the reports should be studied in context. So MHRA (or JVCI, or whoever's the appropriate body) should consider whether the vaccines are actually causing more of (say) heart attacks. And (for relatively common things like heart attacks) that'll need looking at other sources of data than the yellow card system.

If there are very rare things then just the yellow card system might show those (I presume that's what happened with these blood clots combined with a low platelet count).

The letter doesn't seem to give any indication of how common the various events are generally so I've no idea whether anyone should be worried about the vaccines possibly causing them.

And comparing with other vaccines, it seems rather likely that these will be associated with higher rates of death because for the most part vaccines aren't given to elderly patients. (An exception being the annual flu vaccines.)
 
Bruce Stephens said:
And comparing with other vaccines, it seems rather likely that these will be associated with higher rates of death because for the most part vaccines aren't given to elderly patients. (An exception being the annual flu vaccines.)
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If I interpret that correct your saying the other vaccines are likely worse. If that is the case and I hope it is, I really wish they would push it.

Its a great british disease - we are all wonderfully creative and brilliant at coming up with ideas and solutions but god awful at communication. I still there there is more risk of dying on the roads than taking a vaccine but we all still do it without thought.
 
BlueArmy said:
If I interpret that correct your saying the other vaccines are likely worse.
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I honestly don't know. I have the impression that the Covid vaccines have stronger side effects (maybe because they're not yet dosed as finely as the yearly flu vaccines?).

I'm just guessing that for most vaccines not too many people die shortly after taking them because most are given to people who're rather unlikely to die in the next few years. But with the Covid vaccines we deliberately started with patients in care homes and similar. That doesn't mean people shouldn't look to see what's happening, but it does mean it needs to be done carefully or we won't learn anything.

The letter from the Ivermectin fans seems (in isolation) not to be helpful. Fine to prompt proper investigation (which I hope is being done anyway) but it doesn't look useful for anything else.

I completely agree with you that I hope we'll see the post release analysis (as we've seen the pre-release trial information).
 
Ivermectin is drug used to treat helminthic infections, such as intestinal worms, and used topically to treat the lesions of acne rosacea. Unlicensed uses are risky. Used orally, these are the potential side effects:

abnormal sensation in eye; anaemia; appetite decreased; asthenia; asthma exacerbated; chest discomfort; coma; confusion; conjunctival haemorrhage; constipation; diarrhoea; difficulty standing; difficulty walking; dizziness; drowsiness; dyspnoea; encephalopathy; eosinophilia; eye inflammation; faecal incontinence; fever; gastrointestinal discomfort; headache; hepatitis; hypotension; joint disorders; leucopenia; lymphatic abnormalities; Mazzotti reaction aggravated; myalgia; nausea; oedema; pain; psychiatric disorder; seizure; severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCARs); stupor; tachycardia; tremor; urinary incontinence; vertigo; vomiting. ( data from the BNF - the British National Formulary)

If folk want to take that to prevent getting Covid, good luck to them. The drug has absolutely no effect on viruses, any more than antibiotics do, because viruses are not living organisms.

And no reputable medical scientist would use it clinical trials against a virus, because that is completely irrational, and would leave them open to legal action, and losing their jobs because the drug is not licensed for such a trial. This is the same as the last row about Chloroquine, an anti malarial drug.
 
mikeyB said:
And no reputable medical scientist would use it clinical trials against a virus, because that is completely irrational, and would leave them open to legal action, and losing their jobs because the drug is not licensed for such a trial. This is the same as the last row about Chloroquine, an anti malarial drug.
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It does seem a bit weird to me. But it is being tested because (as I understand it) some trials have suggested it works while others haven't. Likely it'll turn out not to be useful (because most things have) but I'm fine with it being tested in proper trials.

What seems irresponsible is claiming that it has enough evidence to start using it routinely. Or that (as some claim) it, together with some other drugs (which also have mixed evidence) are sufficiently effective and safe that we should prefer them to the vaccines.
 
Mixing other drugs with Invermectin is particularly risky, so safety comparisons with vaccines are ludicrous. And viruses, as I said, are not living organisms, so cannot be killed with a drug designed to kill worms. So neither effective nor safe.
 
Amity Island said:
Never, ever heard of it until yesterday, now it's become the popular topic on the thread.
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Yes, my fault. I apologise.

For what it's worth I'm also unhappy with the idea of mandating vaccination of NHS staff. I think, anyway. I think there's arguments on both sides. If the healthcare worker looking after me had chosen not to be vaccinated I think I'd worry about their judgment. But I'd much prefer encouragement (with individual discussions and so on) than threatening people.

(I'm OK with the idea that we'll "have to learn to live with the virus". I'd just like us to live with as little of it as we can, so I want us to have really high vaccination rates. Globally, obviously. So it's more like measles than flu: something that flares up occasionally but most of us can ignore it most of the time.)
 
Amity Island said:
The Ivermectin 3 @Bruce Stephens @Eddy Edson and @mikeyB :D

Never, ever heard of it until yesterday, now it's become the popular topic on the thread.

I've since read a little bit about it and as @Bruce Stephens says, looks like some doctors are trying to have it licenced to treat covid19. We will have to see how the trials go...it may become another option in the future for new variants.
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If I understand it correctly, some medical researchers have made claims about it's efficacy without feeling any obligation to provide any sort of credible research studies to back their view. They appear to have used it on patients, decided it works and apparently that's all that is needed. I seem to remember reading one of them being directly quoted as being annoyed at being asked to provide comparative placebo trials. He thinks that would be "unethical" by all accounts.

All of them are properly trained doctors from good universities too. And yet this is the nonsense they come out with.

The covid pandemic really has brought out the worst in a lot of professional scientists and medical people - all of whom seem to be drunk on any attention they get.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
I'm OK with the idea that we'll "have to learn to live with the virus"
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Absolutely agree on that.

Sadly for us Scots, Nicola Sturgeon doesn't agree with that phrase at all.
She said this week (during FM questions I think) that such a phrase is "disrespectful to the dead".

I do like her and have voted for her for many years now but she's sorely testing my patience this last year with irrelevant, patronising nonsense like this.
 
pm133 said:
All of them are properly trained doctors from good universities too. And yet this is the nonsense they come out with.
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Can see how it happens: you've got a bunch of sick people and you know many are going to die, and you don't know of effective things to do for them. But you have this reasonably safe Ivermectin (or one of the other choices) which might help and it's easy for you to use those.

In contrast, doing a proper trial's hard even if you can do it just using your patients. Which you probably can't because you don't have enough.

That's one of the successes of the RECOVERY trial: making it easy for everyone so they could roll it out to really large numbers.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
Can see how it happens: you've got a bunch of sick people and you know many are going to die, and you don't know of effective things to do for them. But you have this reasonably safe Ivermectin (or one of the other choices) which might help and it's easy for you to use those.

In contrast, doing a proper trial's hard even if you can do it just using your patients. Which you probably can't because you don't have enough.
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That's understandable but what you can't be doing, as these researchers are doing, is running around screaming that this drug is some kind of wonder cure for things and that you are being held back for "reasons unknown".

That provides fuel for conspiracy theory nutters who then run around persuading normally sane people to avoid taking a life saving vaccine that HAS been shown to work in controlled trials.
Who knows how many lives the actions of these doctors has cost.
 
pm133 said:
That provides fuel for conspiracy theory nutters who then run around persuading normally sane people to avoid taking a life saving vaccine that HAS been shown to work in controlled trials.
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In this case it's the same group (which is how this came up).

Though arguably they're not (I think) arguing that people shouldn't take any of the vaccines, they're merely searching the yellow card reporting system and reporting the nastiest sounding results and saying that they should be investigated. So (like the apparently crazy Naomi Wolf) they're just asking questions.
 
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